A robust perennial grass. Culms tough, branched, up to 1 m tall or taller. Leaf-blade linear-lanceolate, 2-10 cm long, 1-6 mm wide, flat or convolute, glabrous, acute. Panicle more or less pyramidal, 5-15 cm long with a few spreading branches. Spikelets ovoid, 3.5-4.5 mm long, glabrous, swollen, often widely gaping at anthesis; lower glume broadly ovate, 3/4 to almost as long as the spikelet, 5-9-nerved; upper glume 7-9-nerved.