The long, unbranched Rhodocoma gigantea culms curve, embellished at their lower nodes by ample whorls of short and thin sterile branchlets; green and needle-like to hair-like. On the plant in picture seen at Kirstenbosch, the lower part is densely bushy from these sterile branchlets.

They are very unlike the stiff, cylindrical fertile culms that continue into conspicuously flowering upper parts (Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist; http://pza.sanbi.org).