Slender tufted annual; culms 28–70 cm. high, spreading and branching near the base, then ascending, leafy. Leaf-blades up to 12 cm. long, 3–5 mm. wide, usually folded, tough, glaucous, conspicuously nerved on the lower surface, pilose on the upper surface, sometimes sparsely, the margins cartilaginous and pectinate-ciliate. Inflorescence 12–28 cm. long, elliptic to narrowly elliptic-oblong; racemes 12–25, straight, ascending, up to 6.5 cm. long. Spikelets narrowly fusiform, 2-flowered, often with a third minute vestigial floret, 5–6 mm. long, overlapping by up to a third of their length, greyish green or olive-green; glumes glabrous, scabrid on the nerve, the tips subacute; lower glume narrowly lanceolate-oblong, 4.5–5.1 mm. long, almost encircling the spikelet at the base, persistent; upper glume linear-oblong, 5.4–5.9 mm. long, falling at the same time as the florets; lemmas elliptic-oblong, 2.7–3.2 mm. long, sericeous on the back around the midnerve with hyaline very closely appressed hairs which obscure the 2-lobed tip, the margins densely fringed with soft erect grey-green hairs reaching 0.75 mm. in the upper half; awn 1 mm. long; palea-keels close together and glabrous in the lower third, then spreading apart and densely fringed in the same manner as the lemma-margins. Caryopsis 1.3–1.6 mm. long. Fig. 83.
