Plants forming loose clumps to about 5 m wide, foliage coated with highly viscid resin. Culms trailing, to 2.5 m long. Leaves coriaceous, mostly glabrous; sheath finally loose, to 16 mm wide, not auriculate, many-nerved; orifice bearded with resin-matted hairs to 3.5 mm long; blade curved, loosely convolute or conduplicate or finally flat, to 60 cm long, to 5 mm wide when flat, not pseudopetiolate, with thick margins bearing stout curved prickles, mealy-scabrous adaxially, finely striate abaxially. Panicles open, 14–25 cm long, to 15 cm wide; branches to 7 cm long, single or 2 or 3 together or semiwhorled, filiform. Spikelets oblong, 5–8 mm long, 4–5 mm wide; pedicel 3–25 mm long; florets 5–7, loose, widely divergent, with terminal floret much reduced. Glumes ±equal, oblong, 2–2.5 mm long, broadly obtuse, notched or with 2 obtuse lobes, muticous, membranous, rounded or flattened on back, strongly 3-nerved, mostly glabrous, often purple with colourless ciliolate margins. Basal lemma obovate, inflated, 2–3 mm long, minutely 3-lobed, mostly indurated with margins and apex membranous, 3-nerved, glabrous, shiny. Palea obovate, about equal to lemma, entire, indurated with membranous apex and margins, ciliolate at apex; keels thick, scaberulous, winged; wings ciliolate, visible in situ. Anthers 1.3–2 mm long.
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