Tufted annual; culms 14-120 cm high, erect or ascending, firm or spongy, rarely fastigiately branched above. Leaf-blades broadly linear to narrowly lanceolate, 545 cm long, 5-12 mm wide, subcordate at the base, flat, glabrous or rarely hispid with tubercle-based hairs, blunt or sharply acute. Panicle ovate or oblong, 5-35 cm long the branches naked below and whorled in the lower part of the panicle. Spikelets oblong-elliptic, 2.3-3 mm long, glabrous, abruptly acute, often grotesquely swollen in diseased plants; lower glume broadly ovate, a third to half as long as the spikelet, 5-7(-9)-nerved, acute; upper glume 11-nerved; lower lemma 9-nerved, its palea almost as long; upper lemma pallid, smooth and shining.