Annual. Culms erect, over 1 1/2 ft. high, simple, 4–5-noded; internodes enclosed in the sheaths except the uppermost. Leaf-sheaths tight, striate, glabrous, smooth, the lower keeled upwards; ligules membranous, rounded, broad, 1–1 1/2 lin. long; blades linear, long and finely tapering upwards, up to 1 ft. by 5 lin., flat, with some long hairs near the base from behind the ligule, midrib slender, primary lateral nerves about 6 on each side. Raceme subcomposite, 4–10, sessile, digitate, the lowest usually somewhat distant from the others which are closely crowded, suberect, 5–5 1/2 in. long, dense, pale green; rhachis straight, triquetrous, about 1/2 lin. wide, angles green, narrowly winged, scaberulous; secondary racemes appressed, up to 2 1/2 lin. long, bearing up to 5 spikelets; pedicels 2–5-nate, unequal, the longest up to 1 1/4 lin. long, finely filiform, angular, scaberulous, tips ciliate. Spikelets tightly imbricate, elliptic-lanceolate to oblong, acute, up to 1 lin. long, 1/2 lin. wide when mature, quite glabrous. Lower glume a minute hyaline membrane, soon breaking up, or 0; upper ovate-oblong, subobtuse, 3/8– 2/3 lin. long, hyaline, finely 3-nerved. Lower floret: valve membranous, as long as the spikelet, 7-nerved, the 3 inner nerves parallel, approximate and prominent, the outer in pairs at the flexures; valvule almost microscopic, broad, emarginate-truncate. Upper floret thinly chartaceous, equalling the lower floret, margins of valve parallel, widely distant. Anther 1/2 lin. long. Grain ellipsoid, slightly compressed from the back, 3/4– 7/8 lin. by almost 1/2 lin., very tightly enclosed by the delicate pale to dark dull brown husks; scutellum elliptic, not quite reaching to the middle of the grain.
