Plants robust, forming hummocks and sometimes rings to 2.5 m wide, stoloniferous, resinous and aromatic on leaf sheaths or not. Flowering culms to 2 m high. Leaves: sheath often fan-shaped, loose, to 22 cm long, to 25 mm wide, auriculate, with numerous ribbed nerves, mostly glabrous; orifice and auricles with white hairs to 3 mm long; blade spreading horizontally, loosely folded or flat or convolute, to 100 cm long, c. 7 mm wide, not pseudopetiolate, with prickly margins. Panicles loose (rarely dense), 60–100 cm long, to 5 cm wide; branches 12–20 cm long, single or paired, simple or sparsely divided. Spikelets numerous, spread regularly along entire length of branches, ovate or lanceolate (rarely oblong or elliptic), 6–9 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, loosely 4–8-flowered, with terminal floret reduced; pedicel 1.5–4 mm long. Glumes elliptic-orbicular or oblonglanceolate, entire or notched, muticous, cartilaginous, often faintly nerved, glabrous; lower glume 4–5 mm long; upper glume 3–4 mm long. Basal lemma lanceolate, 2.8–4.5 mm long; body indurated, 9-nerved, smooth (rarely scabrous); apex and margins membranous and scaberulousciliate; apex strongly 3-nerved; lobes similar, tooth-like, 0.5–0.7 mm long, flat. Palea elliptic, slightly shorter than lemma body, entire, mostly indurated with apex membranous, glabrous; keels winged. Anthers 1.5–2.2 mm long.
Occurs in deep, often white, sandy and sandy loam soils, on coastaldunes, sandstone plateaux and outcrops, in gorges and vine thickets, on coastallateritic headlands and foreshores, and on banks of watercourses and billabongs.
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