Regional litterature: Fl. Nigeria: 97 (1970); FWTA: 496 (1972); Gram. Togo: 232 (1983); Ghana grasses: 162 (1977); Gram. Cameroun: 492 (1992); Poac. Niger : 609, fig. (1999); Fl. Bénin: 210 (2006); Pl. Burkina Faso: 91 (2012); Fl. Chad (2013).
Description:
* Coarse erect annual of 0.5 - 3 m high. Culms erect, robust, yellow to pink, rather soft and easily crushe;, nodes dark, glabrous or bearded; often prop- rooted from the lower nodes. Leaves long linear, 20 – 70 cm long and 5 – 20 mm wide, flaccid, light green, flat with a broad white midrib, sometimes hairy, with scabrid margins tending to roll outwards on drying; base slightly rounded, sometimes hairy; ligule membranous, densely fringed with hairs, 1 - 2 mm long; sheath glabrous. Roots poorly developed in a rather fine fibrous mat.
* Inflorescence in an open panicle of 20 - 60 cm long, on numerous flowering branches from the upper culm bearing many short paired racemes barely excerted from the long conspicuous papery pink spatheoles. Spatheoles lanceolate, 4 – 8.5 cm long, peduncle 2 - 3 cm long, glabrous, sometimes bearded above. Racemes deflexed, 1.5 – 3.0 cm long, bearing 2 fertile spikelets on each; rachis fragile, ciliate on margins with linear internodes; raceme-bases flattened, sub equal, 1.5 – 2 mm long, pubescent. Homogamous spikelets twopairson both racemes, forming involucres.
* Sessile spikelets lanceolate, 7 – 8 mm long, callus linear, 2 – 2.5 mm long, pubescent, pungent. Lower glume lanceolate, as long as spikelet, coriaceous, glabrous to pubescent; upper glume linear, coriaceous. Lower lemma lanceolate, as long as spikelet, hyaline, 2 –veined; upper lemma linear, membranous, 1 –veined, 2 –fid with lemma geniculate awn from sinus, 7 – 11 cm long with twisted hirsute column with 0.5 – 1 mm long hairs. Pedicelled spikelets lanceolate, 7 – 11 mm long; glumes acute, awned with 6 –20 mm long awn. Homogamous spikelets 7 - 15 mm long; glumes scabrous or ciliate on margins, awnless.