Annual, fascicled, up to over 1 ft. high. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, about 4-noded, branched below (sometimes copiously), pubescent below the nodes, terete or compressed below. Leaf-sheaths thin, rather loose, striate, softly pubescent all over; ligule a dense fringe of short hairs; blades linear from an equally wide base, long-tapering to a fine point, 3–7 in. by 2–3 lin., flat, flaccid, pale green, very finely and softly pubescent all over, margins finely cartilaginous, scabrid, not crisped, midrib very slender, whitish, primary lateral nerves about 4 on each side, very fine, differentiated below only. Panicle narrow, 2–3 in. long, subsecund, of 5–8 very lax suberect or spreading ultimately deflexed subsessile or sessile racemes; common axis slender, angular, loosely pubescent with some longer hairs intermixed. Racemes simple, secund or subsecund, the lower up to 3/4 or more rarely 1 in. long, the upper rapidly decreasing and reduced to 4–2-nate or solitary spikelets which arrange themselves in a terminal raceme; rhachis flexuous, filiform, triquetrous, up to 1/6 lin. wide, pubescent with some longer hairs intermixed, internodes 1 1/2–4 lin. long; lowermost pedicels 2-nate, the others solitary and short, the longer of a pair rarely up to 2 lin. long, angular, puberulous, with long hairs upwards. Spikelets distant, broadly ovate or elliptic-oblong, obtuse to subobtuse, 1 1/2 to 2 lin. long, whitish and more or less glossy, almost like ivory. Glumes dissimilar; lower very broadly obovate, subacute, usually contracted at the base into a deeply folded or puckered cuft which tightly clasps the internode between the glumes, very white, faintly 3–5-nerved; upper very obtuse, broad, very slightly shorter than the lower floret, thinly papery, 5-nerved, nerves greenish, sometimes vanishing downwards. Lower floret ♂ (? always): valve similar to the upper glume, but somewhat narrower upwards to obscurely apiculate, tip stouter; valvule oblong, truncate with narrow flaps, shorter than the valve; anthers 2/3 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, broad-elliptic in outline, subacute, 1 1/4 to over 1 1/2 lin. long, shortly constricted at the base: valve and valvule crustaceous, smooth, at length brownish. Grain broad-elliptic in outline, dorsally compressed, over 1 lin. by 3/4 lin., greenish-yellow; scutellum about three-quarters the length of the grain, ovate-lanceolate to almost panduriform.
