Annual; culms 20.60 cm high or sometimes more, decumbent at the base, geniculately ascending. Leaf-blades broadly linear to narrowly lanceolate, 3-30 cm long, 3-17 mm wide. Inflorescence digitate or subdigitate (rarely with an axis up to 15 cm long in robust specimens), composed of 2-16 racemes; racemes stiff, 3-20 cm long, the spikelets binate and overlapping by about two-thirds their length on a winged rhachis with triquetrous midrib; pedicels triquetrous, scabrid, obtuse or slightly expanded at the tip. Spikelets narrowly elliptic to ovate elliptic, 2.3-3.5 mm long, sharply acute; lower glume an ovate scale 0.2 mm long; upper glume a third to half as long as the spikelet, 3-nerved; lower lemma as long as the spikelet, 7-nerved, the nerves evenly spaced (or occasionally with a wide interspace flanking the midrib), scaberulous on the nerves with minute siliceous spines, obscurely and appressedly pubescent, rarely with brownish glassy bristles very rarely with a ciliate frill; fruit lanceolate, grey or light brown.