Tufted annual or short-lived perennial; culms 5-30cm high, erect, spreading or prostrate, sometimes with a creeping base rooting from the nodes, slightly compressed. Leaf-blades flat or folded, 1-14cm long, 1–2(–5)mm wide, flaccid, abruptly tapered to a pointed or bluntly hooded tip, often transversely wrinkled, scaberulous on the margins; ligule blunt, 2–5mm long. Panicle ovate or pyramidal, (1–)3–8(–12)cm long, loose or rather dense; branches paired, spreading or de-flexed after anthesis, smooth. Spikelets with 3–5(-10) closely spaced florets, ovate or oblong, 3–10mm long, pale or bright green, reddish or purplish; glume unequal, the lower lanceolate to ovate, 1.5–3mm long, 1–nerved, the upper elliptic or oblong, 2–4mm long, 3–nerved; lemmas semi-elliptic or oblong in side-view, 2.5–4mm long, blunt, glabrous or sparsely to densely ciliate on the keel and nerves, without any wool at the base; palea nearly as long as the lemma, ciliate all along the keels; anthers 0.6–0.8(–1)mm long.