Tufted annual or short-lived perennial; culms 10-80 cm high, erect or geniculately ascending, sometimes rooting from the lower nodes. Leaf-blades flat or inrolled, 2-20 cm long, up to 5.5 mm wide, subamplexicaul at the base, the apex subacute, glabrous or sparsely hairy towards the base. Panicle narrowly oblong to broadly ovate, 5-20 cm long, open or fairly densely contracted. Spikelets 11-80-flowered, ovoid to oblong, 3.5-16 mm long, 2.54 mm wide, the florets slightly overlapping and often diverging at nearly 90 degrees from the rhachilla, typically straw-coloured, tinged to deeply suffused with purple, breaking up from the base, the rhachilla persistent; glumes unequal, narrowly lanceolate in side-view, 1-nerved, the lower 1.3-1.7 mm long, the upper 1.7-1.9 mm long, subacute; lemmas broadly ovate to suborbicular when flattened, (1.5)1.8-2.2 mm long, punctulate, mucronulate, the nerves distinct; palea falling with the lemma, the keels scabrid; anthers 3, 0.2 mm long. Caryopsis obovoid or ellipsoid, laterally compressed, 0.6-0.8 mm long, orange-brown.