Plants perennial; rhizomatous, rhizomes succulent. Culms 70-200 cm, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes. Sheaths open; auricles absent; ligules membranous, truncate to rounded; blades 4-12 mm wide, flat. Inflorescences terminal, open panicles. Spikelets laterally compressed; florets 3-4; rachillas extended beyond the uppermost floret; disarticulation above the glumes and between the florets. Glumes unequal, acute to acuminate, unawned; lower glumes shorter than the adjacent lemmas, 1-5-veined; upper glumes exceeding the adjacent lemmas, almost as long as the spikelets, 3-7-veined; calluses short, blunt, pubescent; lemmas not keeled, 3-9-veined, veins excurrent, apices indistinctly 3-lobed or toothed; lodicules free, glabrous; anthers 3; ovaries with pubescent apices. Caryopses about 2 mm, dorsiventrally compressed. x = 7. Name from the Greek scolos, cusp or prickle, and chloa, grass, an allusion to the excurrent lemma veins.

Spikelets large, 3-4-fld, disarticulating above the glumes and between the lemmas; glumes unequal, thin, the first 3-veined, the second 5- veined, about equaling the lemma above it; lemmas lanceolate, acute, 7-veined, very thin at the tip, densely villous on 2 sides at the callus; palea thin, 2-toothed, finely ciliate, equaling the lemma; tall grasses, perennial from a long thick rhizome, with flat elongate blades and widely spreading panicle. 2, the other in Siberia.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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