Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials forming large tufts up to 20 dm tall.

Stems: Culms erect, up to 1 cm in diameter at base, glabrous.

Roots: Roots fibrous.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades flat, usually involute toward the slender apex, usually 5-10 mm wide. Sheaths glabrous, pilose or glabrous at throat; ligule a dense row of hairs 0.2-0.4 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Inflorescences paniculate, open, oblong, up to 50 cm long, the branches widely spaced, fasciculate, ascending, usually bearing spikelets nearly to base, axils pilose, the axis and branches smooth in lower part, scabrous in upper part; spikelets 5-10-flowered, compressed, 5-9 mm long, rachilla internodes ca. 0.8 mm long, scabrous, lateral pedicels ca. 1 mm long; glumes 2.5-3 mm long, scabrous, apex acuminate. Lemmas loosely imbricate, exposing rachilla, ca. 3 mm long, glabrous, keel scaberulous, apex acuminate or acute; palea slightly shorter than lemma, keel scabrous-ciliate.

Fruit: Caryopsis reddish brown; ovoid to oblong; trigonous; 0.5-1.5 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 44

Habitat: Common on moist to wet slopes in ravines and mesic forest; usually in partial shade.

Elevation Range: 170–2,044 m.