Caespitose annual or rarely short-lived perennial; culms up to 50 cm tall, erect or ascending, often rooting from the lower nodes, branched or unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, with a ring of elongated glands just below the nodes; leaf sheaths glabrous or pilose with tubercle-based hairs, with or without glandular pits above; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 4–8 cm × c. 3 mm, linear, flat or involute, thinly pilose or glabrous, eglandular.Panicle 6–14 cm long, narrowly oblong-ovate, rarely ovate, loose or somewhat dense, the spikelets evenly distributed on pedicels 1–2.5 mm long, the primary branches mostly branched from the base, often in a succession of whorls (the lowermost always whorled), terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous or pilose in the axils, the branchlets and pedicels with a glandular ring.Spikelets 4–6 × 1.4–2 mm, oblong or narrowly oblong, lightly laterally compressed, 4–10-flowered, the lemmas disarticulating from below upwards, the rhachilla persistent below but fragile above; glumes subequal, 1.3–1.8 mm long, lightly keeled, lanceolate to narrowly ovate in profile, scaberulous on the keel, subacute at the apex, the inferior reaching to between 1/2 and 2/3 the way along the adjacent lemma, the superior to 1/3 the way; lemmas 1.5–1.9 mm long, lightly keeled, narrowly oblong-elliptic in profile, membranous but with obscure lateral nerves, ± appressed to the rhachilla, those in opposite rows not imbricate, the rhachilla visible between them, grey-green, minutely asperulous, obtuse to broadly rounded at the apex; palea persistent, glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, scaberulous; anthers 3, 0.7–1 mm long.Caryopsis 0.6–0.7 mm long, elliptic.