Densely tufted perennial with creeping rhizome; culms 30-120 cm high, erect or geniculately ascending. Leaf-blades flat, up to 30 cm long and 4 mm wide. False panicle 20-30 cm long, compound, loose, the racemes solitary or paired; spatheole 1.5-2 cm long, usually tinged with grey, red or purple, glabrous; raceme containing 2-4 fertile spikelets. Homogamous pairs separated by a short intemode 03-1 mm long; lower glume lanceolate, 5-8 mm long, glabrous to sparsely or densely tuberculate-ciliate. Sessile spikelet 5-7 mm long, dorsally compressed, with a blunt bearded callus c.l mm long; lower glume puberulous or subglabrous to tuberculate-ciliate especially on the keels; upper lemma lanceolate, hyaline, awnless. Pedicelled spikelet 6-8 mm long including the callus, puberulous to tuberculate-ciliate on the keels.

Fl. & Fr. Per. June-October.

Type: India, Wallich 8773 (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir). Afghanistan eastwards through the western Himalays.

Themeda anathera shows a great deal of variation in the indumentum of the spikelets. The involucral spikelets may be glabrous (var. glabrescens), or they may have submarginal tubercle-based hairs (var. submarginata of Grasses W. Pak. 1:126, original source unknown), or they may be dorsally tuberculate-ciliate (var. hirsute). Similarly the sessile and pedicelled spikelets may be puberulous or almost glabrous to densely tuberculate-ciliate especially on the margins; they may be the same or one hairy and the other not (the pedicelled spikelets do not necessarily lack the tubercle-based hairs as reported in Grasses W. Pak. 1:126).

Themeda anathera is a good fodder grass.