An annual or short-lived perennial. Culms 30-110 cm. high, erect or more often decumbent, rooting and emitting shoots from the lower nodes as well, 2-5-noded, terete, finely striate, glabrous and smooth. Leaves usually densely crowded around the base, distant along the culms; sheaths somewhat tight when young, later lax and slipping off the culm, keeled, striate, glabrous and smooth; lamina (5)9-10(15) x (0.8)1.25-2(3) cm., lanceolate, broadly lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, tapering to a fine point, base auriculate or broadly rounded, inconspicuously puberulous on both surfaces but soon becoming glabrous, scaberulous along the edges, otherwise smooth. Panicle 12-35 x 5-25 cm., usually lax and open, broadly elliptic or obovate in outline, erect, often partly enclosed in the sheath of the uppermost leaf; main axis obtusely angular or sulcate, asperulous along the ridges, glabrous; branches up to 18 cm. long, spreading or obliquely ascending, usually rather lax, branched from near the base, the subdivisions filiform, asperulous. Pedicels up to 15 mm. long, filiform, asperulous. Spikelets 9-21 x 2-3 (rarely-4) mm., oblong to linear-oblong. Glumes ovate when flattened; the inferior 1.5-2.3 mm. long; the superior 1.8-3 mm. long. Lemma 2.2-3.5 mm. long, broadly ovate to very broadly elliptic-ovate. Anthers 0.6-1.4 mm. long. Caryopsis c. 1.2 x 0.6 mm.