Tall perennial tussocks with robust intravaginal shoots (extravaginal in C. splendens). Leaf-sheaths heavily coated in epicuticular wax or not, breaking into short segments or remaining entire. Ligule a rim of short hairs. Leaf-blade to 2 m long, tapering, 1-many evident ribs, scabrid and sharply cutting from many antrorse prickle-teeth or scarcely so, homo- or heterochromous. Panicle large, plumose, variously coloured subtended by long, hair-fringed bract, branches stiff to flexible. Glumes 1-nerved, transparent, minutely prickle-toothed. Spikelets with 3-7 florets. Flowers dimorphic on separate plants, ☿ and ♀, gynodioecious. Lemma 3-nerved, hairs abundant and radiating (except on ☿) awned from between bifid lobes or entire and mucronate. Lodicules 2, cuneate and irregularly lobed, hair-tipped. Androecium of male-fertile flowers with 3 long anthers, of male-sterile flowers reduced to small staminodes or shorter sterile anthers. Gynoecium with 2 plumose stigmas (and the remnant of a third), ♀ > ☿. Caryopsis free; hilum linear c. ½ caryopsis. Fig. 17.