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Caespitose, open-based, perennial tussock with mostly floriferous, erect to nodding shoots; branching extravaginal, cataphylls hairy. Sheath to 4 cm, finely retrorse-scabrous, and densely short-hairy, terminating in a tuft of hair to 1.5 mm. Ligule to 0.6 mm, ciliate or sometimes glabrous. Lamina to 20 cm × 1 mm diam., inrolled, rigid, few-nerved, collar thickened, abaxially with retrorse prickle teeth in columns between nerves and some antrorse long hairs, adaxially with abundant short hairs and long hairs especially near the margins, margins with antrorse prickle teeth or glabrous. Culms to 40 cm, nodes glabrous, internodes pubescent below nodes, glabrous elsewhere. Inflorescence to 25 cm, subtended by hairy bract to 4 mm or hairs to 3 mm, erect; verticels close set; branches short, widely spreading; rachis glabrous below, becoming scabrous above, pedicels and branches with short stiff hairs. Glumes ± equal, purple fading brown, tapering to hyaline awn-like processes to 2 mm or acuminate, scabrous, short stiff hairs on midnerve, < awn column, lower to 14 mm, 3-nerved, upper to 13 mm, 3-5- nerved. Lemma 4.5 mm, fulvous, and with dense short hairs, usually scabrous above, lobes minute (0.1 mm); coma obscure or of few short hairs; awn to 85 mm, falcate, sometimes also 1-geniculate, column hairy, tightly twisted, to 10 mm, arista to 55 mm, usually intertwined with awns of adjacent florets. Palea with long internerve hairs, apex glabrous, erose. Callus to 1.75 mm, hairs to 2.5 mm, white to brown. Lodicules 3; anterior to 1.5 mm, ligulate, nerved; posterior to 0.4 mm. Anthers penicillate, to 3.75 mm in chasmogamous flowers, reduced to 1 fertile anther, 0.5-1.5 mm, and 2 sterile in cleistogamous flowers.