Gynomonoecious or hermaphroditic. Annuals; tufted, tufts mostly small, bases narrow, light green; tillers intravaginal (each subtended by a single 2-keeled, longitudinally split prophyll over 0.5 cm long), without cataphyllous shoots, most shoots flowering. Culms 2--18 cm tall, spreading to erect, sometimes geniculate, slender, leafy, terete, smooth; usually 1 node exerted. Leaves; leaf sheaths terete or weakly compressed, bulb absent, smooth, glabrous; butt-sheaths thin papery; flag-leaf sheath 1--5 cm long, margins fused ca. 33% their length; throats and collars smooth, glabrous; ligules 0.5--3 mm long, decurrent, abaxially smooth, glabrous, apices obtuse to truncate; blades 1--7 cm long, 1--3(--4) mm wide, flat or weakly folded, thin, soft. smooth, margins usually slightly scabrous, broadly prow-tipped; blades all about equal in length, flag-leaf blades well developed. Panicles 1--6 cm long, 1.5--3 x long as wide, erect, more or less open, rhomboid, moderately congested; rachis with 1--2(--5) branches per node; primary branches mostly ascending, straight, terete or sulcate, smooth; lateral pedicels less than 1/5 the spikelet in length, smooth; longest branches 1.5--3 cm, spikelets crowded along the branches, with up to 10 spikelets from the base to distal 1/2. Spikelets 3--5 mm long, lanceolate, laterally compressed, not bulbiferous; florets 2--6, proximal hermaphroditic, distal sometimes pistillate; rachilla internodes terete, smooth, glabrous, usually exposed in side view, distal internode 1/2--3/4 length of distal lemma; glumes unequal, smooth, distinctly keeled, keels smooth, apex acuminate to acute or obtuse, sharp pointed or slightly blunt; lower glumes 1--1.5 mm long, 1-veined, narrowly lanceolate, often slightly sickle shaped, or subulate; upper glumes 2--2.5 mm long, usually shorter than or subequaling lowest lemma, 3-veined, lanceolate to oblanceolate; calluses glabrous; lemmas 2--2.5 mm long, broadly lanceolate, light green, distinctly keeled, smooth throughout, keels, marginal, and intermediate veins densely crisply puberulent to long villous, between veins glabrous, intermediate veins prominent, margins and edges smooth, apices obtuse to acute; paleas keels smooth, short to long villous over the keels. Flowers cleistogamous to weakly chasmogamous; lodicules 0.15--0.2 mm long (the upper sometimes rudimentary); anthers 0.1--0.55 mm long, more or less spherical to short elliptical prior to dehiscence, distal flower ones sometimes vestigial; caryopses 1.4 mm long, elliptical in side-view, subcylindrical in cross-section, pale green, sulcus almost flat, hilum 0.1 mm long, round to oval, grain slightly adherent to the palea. 2n = 14. Genotype: Mm