Tufted perennial arising from a knotted woody rhizome; culms 30-120 cm high, wiry, straggling. Leaf-blades linear, 5-30 cm long, 1.5-8(-10) mm wide, light green to glaucous, broadest at the rounded base and tapering to a filiform tip. False panicle narrowly oblong, 5-20(-30) cm long, erect; spatheoles narrowly lanceolate, 1-2 cm long, becoming yellowish. Racemes 10-15 mm long, the lowermost intemode and pedicel connate and swollen; internodes and pedicels densely ciliate along the margins, puberulous on the back. Sessile spikelet oblong-elliptic, 3-4.5 mm long; lower glume flat in the upper half and with a deep V-shaped groove in the lower, the keels winged above; upper lemma deeply bifid, with an awn 6-15 mm long. Chromosome number, 2=20.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: October-November.

Type: India, Madras, Wight 1700(K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind & Baluchistan); India and Sri Lanka; Arabia; eastern Africa from Sudan to South Africa.

Cymbopogon caesius is very closely related to Cymbopogon martini but differs by its wiry, less robust habit, its narrower leaf-blades rounded rather than cordate at the base, the glaucous rather than dark green upper surface of the leaves and the yellowish rather than reddish mature panicle.