Rhizomatous perennial; culms simple or branched, 0.5-3 m high or more, slender to rather stout. Leaf-blades 20-90 cm long, 0.5-4 cm wide. Panicle loose when in flower, sometimes somewhat contracted after flowering, lanceolate to pyramidal, mostly 10-55 cm long, 3-25 cm wide; primary branches compound, bare at the base, ultimately bearing racemes of 1-5 spikelet pairs. Sessile spikelet elliptic to subelliptic, 45-5(-5.5) mm long, at first ± hairy and cream to buff-yellow or twany, at the length often tawny, mahogany red, purplish to blackish brown or black and sometimes almost glabrous; lower glume keeled above, the wings of the keels widening upwards to end in minute teeth, forming with the short apex a distinctly 3-toothed tip; upper lemma acute and minutely mucronate or 2-lobed with an awn 10-16 mm long. Pedicelled spikelet at length deciduous, often purplish, male, 4.5-6.5 mm long. 2n=40.