Perennial with extensive creeping rhizomes. Culms up to about 2 m high, smooth, hard and polished. Leaf-blades up to 40 cm long and 12 mm wide, smooth, coriaceous with spinulose margins; ligule a narrow ciliate rim up to 1 mm long. Panicle 10-20 cm long, narrow, the branches erect. Spikelets narrowly oblong to narrowly ovate, 12-15 mm long including the awn, glabrous, deciduous, obliquely articulated with the pedicel; sterile lemmas subulate, 2.54 mm long; fertile lemma boat-shaped with a large projecting wing on the back, cuspidate with a stout hard glabrous awn about 4 mm long.