Tufted annual or short-lived perennial; culms 10-150 cm high, erect. Leaf-blades flat, up to 30 cm long and 5 mm wide; ligule membranous, 0.3-0.6 mm long, truncate, fimbriate. Panicle linear, 4-50 cm long; branches ascending close to the main axis or spreading and the panicle lanceolate to narrowly ovate or branches contracted in dense remote pseudo-whorls, typically 3-14 cm long, bare towards the base, the spikelets shortly pedicelled and appressed to the secondary branchlets or longer pedicelled and spreading. Spikelets 4-14-flowered, ovate-oblong, 1.3-3 mm long, breaking up from the apex, the rhachilla fragile; glumes narrowly ovate to broadly oblong-elliptic, subequal, 0.4-0.7 mm long, acute to obtuse; lemmas broadly ovate, 0.7-1 mm long, obtuse; anthers 2, 0.2 mm long. Caryopsis ellipsoid, 0.3-0.5 mm long.