Annual. Culms erect or geniculately ascending and rooting at the lower nodes, 1 1/2–2 1/2 ft. high, slender, terete, usually branched, 4—many-noded, densely pubescent to glabrous. Leaf-sheaths loose and more or less exposing the culms or moderately tight, usually shorter than the internodes, finely striate, the lower pubescent to pilose from minute tubercles, the upper glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim up to 1/2 lin. long; blade linear from a narrowed base, long and finely acute, 2–6 in. long, 1 1/2–3 1/2 lin. wide, flat, ascending or spreading, glabrous or minutely pubescent, margins scaberulous. Panicle lanceolate to ovate in outline, 3–5 in. long, 1 1/2–2 1/2 in. wide, lax; rhachis slender, grooved or flattened on one side, glabrous and smooth; branches solitary, divided at the base and very sparingly upwards, ascending or spreading, finely filiform to capillary, flexuous, like the branchlets glabrous and smooth; pedicels capillary, very flexuous, usually 2–5 lin. long, with shortly hairy or glabrous tips. Spikelets oblong with gaping slightly recurved beaks, 4–6 1/2 lin. long, 1 1/2 lin. wide, strongly compressed and keeled, pale straw-coloured with pale-brown beaks, densely bearded at the base, the remainder finely pubescent to glabrous except for the pilose keels. Glumes distant by 3/4–1 lin.; lower oblong, emarginate or rotundate-truncate, 1–1 3/4 lin. long, 1-nerved, membranous, glabrous except for the densely bearded callus and ciliate margins; upper obliquely lanceolate in profile, conspicuously gibbous below the middle, tapering upwards into a long narrow strongly compressed beak 1/3 lin. wide, and half as long as the glume, acutely and shortly two-lobed at the tip with a straight or flexuous awn up to 7 1/2 lin. long from the sinus, prominently 5-nerved with the inner nerves parallel and near the margins and with concave depressions between the nerves (except when young), coriaceous below the middle, chartaceous above, densely pilose on the keel below the middle with erect white hairs slightly exceeding the tip of the glume, glabrous or pubescent between the nerves and near the densely ciliate margins, rarely shortly pubescent all over. Lower floret ♂: valve slightly longer and less compressed than the upper glume, linear-lanceolate in profile, almost straight on the keel, finely and inconspicuously 5-nerved, otherwise similar to the upper glume; valvule linear-lanceolate, 1 1/2–2 3/4 lin. long, membranous, margins ciliate. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve ovate-oblong when flattened, emarginate, about 1 1/2 lin. long, thinly chartaceous, finely 5-nerved, glabrous.
