annual; culms fascicled, erect or geniculate, often stout, terete, 2–5 ft. long, simple or almost so, glabrous, smooth or scabrid below the panicle, 5–7-noded, sheathed all along or some internodes at length exserted; sheaths terete, striate, glabrous except at the finely villous or ciliate margins and a similar transverse line at the junction with the blade; ligule a densely hairy rim; blades linear, very long tapering to a setaceous point, 1/2–1 1/2 ft. by 3–10 lin., flat, flaccid, scaberulous, particularly above, glabrous, margins scabrid to spinulous; panicle often nodding or flexuous, spike-like, cylindric, stout, often lobed, 1 1/2–12 in. by 4–12 lin., rather dense to compact, shortly or long bristly; axis rather stout, usually tomentose; branches spirally arranged or more or less whorled, very short and branched from the base or the lower 1/2– 3/4 in. long, and undivided at the tomentose base; branchlets reduced to dense sessile or subsessile clusters; each spikelet usually subtended by a pair of scabrid green or purplish bristles, 1 1/2–4, rarely up to 8 lin., long, or the bristles more numerous owing to the reduction or suppression of some of the spikelets; spikelets oblong-ellipsoid to globose, obtuse, 1–1 1/4 lin. long, light green, glabrous; lower glume hyaline, broad, ovate, acute, 1–3-nerved, about 1/3 as long as the spikelet; upper glume thin, membranous, elliptic, concave, 5- to sub-7-nerved, 2/3– 3/4 as long as the spikelet; lower floret barren; valve similar to the upper glume, dorsally flattened, 5-nerved, equalling the upper (at least when in flower); pale hyaline, more or less arrested or 0; hermaphrodite floret ellipsoid to globose, obtuse or obscurely apiculate, 1–1 1/4 lin. long, whitish yellowish or reddish; valve papery to crustaceous, smooth or very obscurely wrinkled, 5-nerved; anthers 1/3 lin. long; grain ellipsoid or subglobose, about 3/4 lin. long, whitish. null
