Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial grass, 6–10 dm tall.

Stems: Culms tufted, stout, usually from a geniculate woody base.

Roots: Roots fibrous.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades 40-60 cm long, 5-10 mm wide. Upper surfaces scabrous; lower surfaces glabrous; blades coriaceous, flat but involute toward apex. Veins parallel. Sheaths glabrous, basal ones often purple, pilose or glabrous at throat; ligule a dense row of short hairs ca. 0.3 mm long, also with deciduous hairs up to 7 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Inflorescences paniculate, pyramidal, somewhat open, 20-40 cm long, axils at the branches pilose, bearing spikelets almost to base, the lower branches glabrous, the upper ones scabrous; spikelets pale green to dark green, 3-5(-10)-flowered, compressed, 4-5 mm long; glumes subequal, slender, 2-3 mm long, deciduous, keel scabrous, long-ciliate, apex acuminate, base usually auriculate. Lemmas loosely imbricate, slightly exposing the scabrous rachilla, 2.5-3 mm long, occasionally ciliate, keel scaberulous, apex acuminate; palea usually conspicuous, 2.5-2.8 mm long, keel scabrous-ciliate, apex bifid or truncate.

Fruit: Fruit a caryopsis

Ploidy:

Habitat: Known only from dry forest on rocky ridges.

Elevation Range: 720–920 m.