Caespitose annual; culms up to 30 cm tall, erect, ascending or procumbent, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; leaf sheaths eglandular; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 2–20 cm × 1.5–3 mm, linear, flat or involute, glabrous, glaucous, eglandular.Panicle 1.5–9 cm long, linear to narrowly lanceolate, the spikelets subsessile and secund on the racemose primary branches or on the short secondary branchlets, the primary branches appressed or occasionally spreading, not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular or with numerous crateriform glands.Spikelets 4–5 × 3–4 mm, broadly oblong to broadly ovate, strongly laterally compressed, 5–7-flowered, the florets disarticulating from the apex downwards, the rhachilla fragile; glumes subequal, 1.4–2.8 mm long, reaching almost to the apex of the adjacent lemmas, sometimes exceeding them, keeled, lanceolate to narrowly ovate in profile, glabrous, with or without crateriform glands along the keel and lateral nerves, subacute to sharply acute at the apex; lemmas 1.9–2.6 mm long, strongly keeled, ovate-lanceolate in profile, membranous with distinct lateral nerves, ± appressed to the rhachilla, those in opposite rows imbricate and concealing the rhachilla, pallid, glabrous, subacute to sharply acute and sometimes mucronate at the apex; palea glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, scaberulous to puberulous; anthers 3, 0.2–0.4 mm long.Caryopsis c. 0.9 mm long, elliptic.