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Graminoid; Notes: Basally tufted annual grass, up to 50 cm high when in flower. Culms basally geniculate but apically steeply ascending, slender but sturdy, terete, smooth, glabrous, bright green to conspicuously purple-tinted especially towards nodes, branched. Leaf blade linear, 10-12 cm long tapering to a fine, spiny tip but which is rapidly withering, bright green with prominent white abax, ribbing folded or rolled, seldom expanded, erect to apically reflexed, at most 2-3 mm wide, glabrous, base rounded. Ligule a narrow ridge bearing a short fringe of white hairs, collar with long white inconspicuous sericeous indumentum. Leaf sheath overlapping basally to form cushion-like growth form, apically exposing culm, 3-5-4 cm long, dull green to strongly purple-tinted at base, white-ribbed, upper margin with scattered long white sericeous indumentum otherwise glabrous, persistent, not tightly circumculmate but relatively open and keeled. Inflorescence a delicate, open panicle, broadly ovate to deltoid in outline, up to 25/12 cm when fully open, young inflorescence enclosed by upper leaf. Secondary axis whorled at least basally, up to 12 cm long, steeply ascending to spreading, slender but rigid, sinuous, glabrous, with black callus at point of junction. Spikelets narrowly avoid, 8-10/1 mm (without awns), solitary or paired, stalked or sessile, grouped at tips of later axis. Glumes membranous, heterogenous, glabrous, straw-coloured to deep purple, persistent. Awn branches 10-12 mm long, slender, glabrous, straight to geniculate. Lemma minutely setulose, purple. Lower glume 6 mm, aristate, broad; upper glume 8 mm, aristate, narrower. Anthers 12 mm long. |