Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials, culms stiffly erect, 6–10 dm tall.

Stems: Culms rather stout, +/- decumbent at base and rooting at lower nodes, nodes often purple, usually many-branched, especially near base, glabrous.

Roots: Roots fibrous.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous. Blades spreading, stiff, lanceolate, flat, 5-15 cm long, 5-17 mm wide, or lower ones sometimes vestigial. Apex acute. Base abruptly rounded. Surfaces conspicuously striate, retrorsely scabrous. Margins distinctly thickened, cartilaginous, usually irregularly crenate. Veins parallel. Sheaths green or often purple, especially at collar, striate, 3-5 cm long, margins densely ciliate with appressed, stout hairs up to 2 mm long; ligule densely ciliate, 1.5-2 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Inflorescences paniculate, often purple, ovoid to ellipsoid, (5-) 10-20 cm long, 4-10 cm wide, branches stiff, terete (cylindrical), usually spreading, glabrous, lower 1/2-2/3 of primary branches without spikelets; spikelets ovoid, 1.5-1.8 mm long; glumes membranous, equal, broadly ovate or suborbicular, slightly shorter to occasionally slightly longer than fertile florets, glabrous or minutely puberulent near apex, indistinctly 7-11-nerved, sometimes sparsely long-hispid or short-hispid, apex acute and slightly beaked. First floret perfect, plano-convex, apex obtuse, second floret pistillate. Lemmas indurate, thick, coriaceous, very sparsely to rather conspicuously pubescent at base and along margins, nerveless; palea partially enclosed by and as long as the lemma, minutely puberulent.

Fruit: Caryopsis reddish brown; ovoid; ca. 1 mm long; smooth.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Occurring on wet ridgetops and in openings in wet forest.

Elevation Range: 215–1,480 m.