Muhlenbergia maxima Laegaard & Sánchez Vega

Loosely caespitose perennials. Culms 100−140 cm tall, erect, rigid, terete, ca. 2−3.2 mm diameter near base with 3 or 4 glabrous to pubescent nodes; internodes terete above. Leaf sheaths longer than the internodes, mostly basally inserted, compressed-keeled near base, becoming fibrous with age, scaberulous, finely striate; ligules 3−5 mm long, apex irregularly toothed to lacinate, margins entire and extended above to form auricles; blades 25−45 cm long, 2.8−4 mm wide, flat to folded, striate, scabrous, apex attenuate, midvein prominent. Panicles 30−46 cm long, 3−6 cm wide, narrow; branches 6−11 cm long, scabrous, ascending, appressed to loosely spreading, mostly floriferous to base, except on lowest branches; pedicels mostly shorter than the spikelets. Spikelets 2.5−2.8 mm long, 1-flowered, greenish with reddish-purple tinting; glumes 2.2−2.6 mm long, almost equal or shorter than the floret, hyaline to membranous, faintly 1-veined, subequal, the lower usually slightly shorter, glabrous to scattered pubescent, scaberulous; lemmas 2.5−2.8 mm long, ovate, 3-veined, awned, with scattered sericeous hairs more numerous along the veins, scaberulous, the callus pilose, the flexuous awn inserted just below the obtuse to acute apex, the awn 4−9 mm long; paleas about as long as the lemma, faintly 2-veined, sericeous between the veins below; lodicules about 0.1 mm long, truncate, glabrous; stamens 3; anthers 1.3−1.8 mm long, purple. Caryopses 1.4−1.7 mm long, fusiform, brownish.

A Peruvian endemic known only from Amazonas and Cajamarca departments.