Botanical Description: Robust perennial to 4 m (13 ft) tall, forming thick clumps or colonies from basal offshoots or short rhizomes. Stems often branched above; internodes more or less bluish glaucous; young nodes with white hairs, later becoming smooth, glabrous. Leaf sheaths glabrous, usually shorter than the internodes; ligule a narrow rim densely fringed with long white hairs. Leaf blades linear to tapering, flat, often bluish green, to 1 m (39 in) long and 3 cm (1 in) wide, pilose near the base, especially on margins; blade margins generally rough; midvein stout, whitish above, strongly keeled below. Inflorescence a dense terminal panicle, spike-like, bristly, tawny to purple-tinged, to about 20 cm (8 in) long and 2 cm (0.8 in) across. Spikelets 4-6 mm long, solitary or in clusters of 2-6 on hairy axis, surrounded by sparsely plumose bristles to 2 cm long that fall with the spikelets at maturity; outermost glume minute or absent.