Annual or short-lived perennial, forming erect or sprawling tufts 10-100 cm high. Leaf-blades linear, up to 20 cm long and 3 mm wide, expanded or folded. Panicle up to 30 cm long, occasionally lax, usually ± contracted about the main branches, sometimes narrow and dense. Spikelets pallid, green or purple; glumes unequal, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, scaberulous on the keel, emarginate and mucronate or acute but never awned, the upper 5-10 mm long, the lower 1-3 mm shorter; lemma 5-13(17) mm long, sometimes no longer than the glumes but usually exceeding the upper by 1-2 mm or more, laterally compressed, convolute, scabrid on the keel or sometimes generally scaberulous on the upper part, passing into the awn without constriction or articulation; callus narrowly oblong, 0.5 mm long, obtuse; central branch of the awn 7-25 mm long, the laterals subequal or occasionally conspicuously shorter.