Erect perennial, 60-90 cm tall; culms simple or branched few times, minutely pubescent especially near nodes. Sheaths long-ciliate and often auriculate at apex; blades 7-15 cm long, 2.5-4.5 cm wide, acuminate, inequilateral at base, scabrid or glabrous, cross-veined. Spikes 10-14 cm long, with 5-11 rather distant spikelets; axes densely pubescent; spikelets 2-2.5 cm long excluding awn, minutely pubescent, bearing 1 flower; 4 bracts at base of spikelet 2-3 mm long; lemma indurate, tapering into an awn 5-10 cm long, the awn coiled in distal half. Fruits brown, cylindrical, ca 8 mm long, covered by 3 acuminate lodicules. Croat 11832. Dispersal is similar to that of S. sodiroana. Guatemala to Ecuador and Brazil; Trinidad. In Panama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, Panama, and Darién and from premontane wet forest