Notes:
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Graminoid; Notes: Tall, erectly tufted perennial grass, up to 1.5 m when in flower. Culms basally slightly geniculate but generally ascending, reed-like, hollow, sturdy, rigid, pale green to yellowish straw-coloured, terete, glaucous, glabrous, nodes not conspicuously gibbose, dark-banded, unbranched. Leaf blade linear, up to 50 cm long, expanded to involute but seldom rolled, dull bluish-green, reddish tinted, tapering gradually to very fine apex, minutely setulose especially along margins, rigid and hard to the touch, base not auriculate. Ligule membranous ridged with scattered, soft, white indumentum continuous onto collar region. Leaf sheath apically with 2 projections on either side of culm, upper margin with long white ciliate indumentum, open and keeled, imbricate at base, deeply canaliculate, straw-coloured with pink-red tinge, glabrous. Inflorescence a complex arrangement of spathulate racemes in spathulate panicle, elongate in broad outline, 25 - 35 x 2.5 cm. Spathes red to yellow-brown glabrous. Spikelets narrowly ellipsoid, 10 x 1 - 1.5 mm, heterogenous; female spikelet bearing long, twisted, hairy awn, sessile; male spikelet stalked, awnless. Glumes glabrous, occasionally ciliate; stalks densely pubescent. |