Annual, up to 5 ft. high, with copious plump root-fibres. Culms erect, stout, up to over 3 lin. thick and spongy below, glabrous, smooth, 5–8-noded, simple or very sparingly branched, sheathed all along or the internodes at length more or less exserted. Leaf-sheaths terete, striate, smooth, quite glabrous or rarely slightly hirsute towards the junction with the blade, or ciliate upwards; ligules 0, junction of sheath and blade quite glabrous inside or scantily and very minutely pubescent, rarely with a few short stiff hairs; blades lanceolate-linear to linear from a slightly narrowed base, which is often long-decurrent in the upper leaves, tapering to a very fine point, 5 to over 15 in. by 5–10 lin., flat, rather firm, glabrous, more or less rough upwards, otherwise usually smooth, margins cartilaginous, scabrid to spinulose, midrib up to 3/4 lin. broad, flat above, whitish, lateral primary nerves 4–6 on each side, slightly prominent. Panicle erect, linear-oblong to linear-lanceolate in outline, 4–12 in. long, dense or sometimes depauperate and loose; axis moderately stout and usually flatly triquetrous with a rounded back, or if stouter pluriangular, often smooth at the base, then scaberulous to very scabrid upwards; branches solitary or frequently here and there subopposite, mostly approximate and nearly always (also the lowest) longer to much longer than the internodes, obliquely erect, often very numerous, 4–1 in. long, forming sessile stout mostly very dense downwards compound false spikes, leaving after the fall of the spikelets a neatly pinnate skeleton of axes; rhachis slender, 1/4– 1/3 (rarely 1/2) lin. wide, triquetrous, scaberulous to scabrid, usually setose at the base and with or without scattered stiff hairs upwards; pedicels fascicled on very short and contracted branchlets to 2-nate, very short, scabrid, tips obscurely discoid. Spikelets in compact clusters, ovate-elliptic or elliptic-oblong, abruptly caudate-acuminate or rostrate, about 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, light green or tinged with purple. Glumes membranous, rather thin, appressedly minutely and rigidly pubescent between the slender scabrid or spinulose nerves; lower very broadly ovate from a clasping base, acute to subacuminate, one-third to almost half the length of the spikelet, 3–5-nerved, upper corresponding in length and outline to the spikelet, excluding the tips which are shortly mucronate or cuspidate, very concave, 5-nerved. Lower floret barren; valve similar to the upper glume, but flat or depressed on the back with cuspidate or aristate tips, awn slender, scaberulous (in the African specimens rarely over 1 1/2 lin. long); valvule oblong, scaberulous above. Upper floret hermaphrodite, elliptic- or ovate-oblong, subacuminate or cuspidate, up to 1 1/4 lin. long, greenish- or greyish-white, polished: valve and valvule subcoriaceous-crustaceous; anthers 1/4 lin. long. Grain obovate-oblong in outline, very broad, 3/4 lin. long.
