Tufted perennial without rhizomes; culms 30-100 cm high. Leaf-blades flat or rolled, mostly 15-30 cm long and 24 mm wide. Panicle ovate or oblong, 440 cm long, the spikelets loosely contracted about the obliquely ascending primary branches. Spikelets 6-50-flowered, narrowly oblong, 3-20 mm long, 1.5-2.5 mm wide, the opposite rows of florets not overlapping, leaving the rhachilla partly visible, typically grey-green but varying from yellowish to dark green and often tinged with purple, breaking up from the base, the rhachilla persistent; glumes subequal, ovate-elliptic, 0.8-1.7 mm long, acute; lemmas broadly ovate and acute to subacute when flattened, 1.4-2 mm long, minutely asperulous; palea falling soon after the lemma, the keels scaberulous; anthers 3, 0.5-1 mm long. Caryopsis ellip¬soid, 0.7 mm long.