Perennial; culms 30-100 cm high, erect, robust. Leaf-blades mostly cauline, up to 30 cm long and 5 mm wide, but sometimes basal and much shorter, bluntly acute to acuminate, glabrous or sometimes with a few tubercle-based hairs. Panicle ovate, 3-12 cm long, with delicate capillary branches fulvously bearded at the tip. Sessile spikelet narrowly oblong; lower glume 4-7 mm long, laterally compressed to a rounded keel, hispidulous at the tip; upper glume glabrous or with a few white hairs on the keel, bearing an awn 6-10 mm long; upper lemma minutely bidentate, with a glabrous or pubescent awn 2-3(-3.5) cm long. Pedicelled spikelets (3-) 4.5-8 mm long, lower glume bearing an awn 3.5-6.5 mm long; pedicels fulvously villous, a quarter to a third the length of the sessile spikelet.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: (June-) August-September.

Type locality: Nepal.

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Afghanistan to northern India, Nepal and Burma; Madagascar and tropical Africa.

Chrysopogon serrulatus is one of a cluster of closely related species which includes the Middle Eastern Chrysopogon aucheri and two species from southern India, Chrysopogon fulvus (Spreng.) Chiov. and Chrysopogon polyphyllus (Hack.) Blatter & McCann. Chrysopogon aucheri is distinguished by its puberulous leaves while in Chrysopogon polyphyllus the leaves are distinctly distichous. The distinction between Chrysopogon fulvus (Chrysopogon montanus Trin.) and Chrysopogon serrulatus is based on more or less arbitrary characters which however, seem to be correlated with different geographical territories. The spikelets of Chrysopogon fulvus are smaller than those of Chrysopogon serrulatus and the upper glume of the sessile spikelet has long golden-brown hairs along the keel. In both these respects there is continual intergradation and but for the fact that so little is known of the cytogenetics and morphological variation within the group, as a whole it might have been better to regard them as subspecies.