Annual; culms up to 40 cm high, slender, branched near the base. Leaf sheaths glabrous, produced into 2 narrowly lanceolate hyaline auricles 2–3 mm long; ligule adnate to the auricles; leaf laminas up to 20 cm × 0.5 mm, glabrous. False panicle up to 30 cm long, linear; spatheoles 2.5–3.5 cm long, narrowly linear; peduncles filiform, glabrous, expanded into a 2 mm long trumpet-like appendage embracing the callus of the sessile spikelet. Raceme exserted from the side of the spatheole, bearing a solitary sessile spikelet and two reduced pedicelled spikelets. Sessile spikelet 6–7 mm long (including the callus); callus c. 1.5 mm long, shortly barbate; inferior glume narrowly oblong, firmly chartaceous, 6-nerved, rounded on the back with a median groove, shortly bidentate at the apex; superior glume similar to the inferior but 3-nerved and drawn out at the apex into a slender awn 12–14 mm long; superior lemma shortly bilobed; awn 4.5–5.5 cm long, the column dark brown, scaberulous. Pedicels filiform, c. 2 mm long, ciliate. Pedicelled spikelet 2–4 mm long, linear, reduced to the glumes, the callus c. 0.25 mm long, oblong, truncate.
