Plants cespitose. Culms 2-4 m, glabrous; nodes glabrous. Sheaths glabrous; auricles absent; ligules 0.6-1.1 mm; blades50-100 cm long, 5-14 mm wide, glabrous. Peduncles 40-80 cm, glabrous; panicles lanceolate; rachises 30-70 cm, glabrous;primary branches 6-20 cm, appressed or spreading; rame internodes 1-2 mm, with hairs. Sessile spikelets 4-6 mm long, 0.7-0.9 mm wide, straw-colored. Callus hairs 4-6 mm, subequal to the spikelets, white; lower glumes smooth, 4-5-veined; upper glumes 3-veined; lower lemmas 3-5 mm, 1-veined; upper lemmas subequal to the lower lemmas, without veins, entire; awns2-5 mm, flat, straight or curved at the base; lodicule veins not extending into hairlike projections; anthers 3. Pedicels 1-3 mm, pubescent. Pedicellate spikelets similar to the sessile spikelets. 2n= 20.
Saccharum ravennae is native to southern Europe and western Asia. It is grown as an ornamental in the Flora region, occasionally escaping and persisting.
T.A. Cope (1995) Saccharum ravennae. Flora of Somalia 4: 252.
Plants tufted perennials up to 4.5 m tall. Leaf blades flat, up to 20 mm wide, with thickened midribs. Panicles 25-70 cm long, dense or interrupted, panicle and branch axes glabrous; rames 1.5-3 cm long. much shorter than the supporting branches. Spikelets slightly heteromrophus, 3-4 mm long. calluses bearded with white or greyish hairsscarcely as long as the spikelets; glumes membranus,those of the sessile spikelets glabrous, those of the pedicellate spikelets sparsely to moderaly hairy; upper lemmas with awns 2.5-10 mm long, clearly exserted from the glumes.
Tripidium ravennae grows long watercourses and in swamps at 0-1400 m in regions N1-3 of the Flora of Somalia. It extends eastward to India.
Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.