Annual, with few or no sterile shoots, up to 4 ft. high. Culms fascicled or solitary, erect or ascending, slender to moderately stout, simple, 3–5-noded, smooth. Leaves glabrous; sheaths smooth; ligule very obtuse or truncate, up to 1 1/2 lin. long; blade linear, acute, up to 9 in. long and 2 1/2 lin. wide, flat, scaberulous. Panicle contracted, subsecund, 4–9 in. long, up to 2 in. wide; rhachis smooth below; branches fascicled, finely filiform, scaberulous. Spikelets narrowly elliptic, 5 1/2–7 1/2 lin. long. Glumes elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, acute or obtuse, 7–9-nerved, glabrous, smooth, the upper slightly longer than the lower. Florets 2, enclosed by the glumes; lower hermaphrodite, awned; upper reduced to a minute rudimentary valve; rhachilla glabrous, not disarticulating at the base or between the florets, the lower internode 1/2– 3/4 lin. long, the upper very slender, about 1 1/4 lin. long. Fertile valve lanceolate-oblong or oblong, 4–4 1/2 lin. long, 2-lobed, with the lobes acute or obtuse and each bearing a mucro or short bristle up to 1 1/2 lin. long, glabrous, scaberulous towards the apex, coriaceous, 7-nerved, awned from above the middle; awn geniculate, up to 10 lin. long, with the column twisted and 2–5 lin. long. Valvule oblong, up to 4 lin. long, ciliolate on the keels towards the apex. Anthers 1 lin. long. Grain oblong, 3 lin. long, pubescent upwards.
