Tufted annual; culms 5-60 cm high, erect. Leaf-blades flat, up to 12 cm long and 5 mm wide. Panicle spike-like, but often ± lobed or interrupted, 1-20 cm long, woolly, the spikelets densely clustered. Spikelets 6-12-flowered, ovate, 2-4.5 mm long, fluffy, often purplish, breaking up from the apex, the rhachilla fragile; glumes lanceolate, subequal, 0.7-1.2 mm long, acute; lemmas oblong-elliptic, 0.9-1.5 mm long, the keels (at least in the upper lemmas) bearing a few short stiff hairs, otherwise smooth, broadly obtuse, more or less obscurely mucronate; paleakeels tuberculate-ciliate, the hairs 0.6-0.7 mm long, exceeding the width of the adjacent floret; anthers 2, 0.2 mm long. Caryopsis ellipsoid, 0.3-0.5 mm long.