A perennial, tufted, aromatic grass with numerous erect culms arising from a short rhizome. Culm (stem) up to 2.5 m tall, terete, smooth, glabrous. Leaves sheathing; sheath striate, glabrous, smooth, yellowish or turning purplish-red, those of the culm tightly clasping and shorter than the internodes, those at the base very short, loose, slipping from the culm; ligule chartaceous, about 1 mm long, ciliate; blade linear with long filiform tip, up to 1 m x 1.5(—5) cm, drooping for 2/3 of their length, smooth and glabrous, light green on upper surface, glaucous below, margins often scabrid-serrate. Inflorescence a large, repeatedly branched panicle, 60—100 cm long, axis zigzag, branches of the highest order ending in a spatheole subtending a pair of racemes; spatheole linear-lanceolate, 1—2.5 cm long, many veined, dull reddish; racemes 1—2 cm long, ciliate, one subsessile, the other one stalked, consisting of 4—7 pairs of spikelets, 1 of each pair sessile, the other pedicellate, terminated by 1 sessile and 2 pedicellate spikelets. Fruit a cylindrical to subglobose caryopsis, with basal hilum.

Vermifuge (leaf extract)

PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

The poultices of the leaves are applied to treat minor cuts and bruises, while extracts are used against internal disorders.