Annual, up to 2 ft. high. Culms erect or slightly geniculate, branched from near the base, the branches forming secondary culms like the primary and forming with them scanty fascicles, all the culms very slender, very smooth, shining, glabrous, about 4-noded, the uppermost internode at length long-exserted, the others shorter or only slightly longer than the sheaths. Leaf-sheaths thin, somewhat loose and the lower often slipping off the internodes, coarsely striate, finely strigillose or hirsute (the upper), scantily bearded at the nodes; ligules very short, truncate, ciliolate; blades narrowly linear, long-tapering to a fine point, 4–9 in. by less to slightly more than 1 lin., flexuous, flat or loosely convolute, more or less rough, at least upwards, shortly and sparingly hirsute or copiously so at the base above the ligule, midrib very slender, lateral nerves very fine and close, the primary (2 on each side) slightly more raised. Racemes mostly 2–3, rarely 4, sessile, or bare at the base for a short distance owing to the arrest of the spikelets, on a very slender subangular common rhachis (3/4 to over 1 in. long), erect or oblique, flexuous, very slender, about 3 in. long, pale greyish-green in flower, rather loose; rhachis slightly wavy, filiform, triquetrous, 1/7– 1/5 lin. wide, angles marginate, scabrid, internodes 1 1/2 lin. long; pedicels 2-nate, finely filiform, very unequal, the longer up to over 1 1/4 lin. long, very angular, scabrid, sometimes with obscurely ciliate tips. Spikelets loosely appressed, subimbricate in flower or usually more loosely disposed, oblong, acute, 2/3–1 lin. long, pale greyish-green, finely rufously hairy on the sides and towards the tips. Lower glume a very minute and usually obscure cuff-like hyaline membrane, early disappearing; upper very thin, narrowly lanceolate or narrowly oblong, subacute, distinctly shorter than the spikelet (about 3/5 lin. long), delicately 3-nerved, with 4 lines of appressed or loose and obliquely spreading hairs, the tips of the latter clavate with a sharp apiculus and usually pale rufous, sometimes mixed with much finer, upwards not widened circinate hairs. Lower floret: valve oblong, subacute or acute, as long as the spikelet, sub-7-nerved, the spaces between the midrib and the inner lateral nerves glabrous, turning olive-green, the next outer spaces and the margins with lines of clavate acutely apiculate upwards pale rufous short hairs, the hairs not or scarcely exceeding the tips, up to 1/10 lin. long; valvule a minute hyaline scale up to 1/7 lin. long; lodicules minute. Upper floret as long as the spikelet, lanceolate, acute, the back very imperfectly covered by the glume, soon rich chestnut-brown, thinly chartaceous, margins of valve whitish, contiguous nearly all along. Anthers 1/4 lin. long.