Caespitose perennial, sometimes short-lived, often spreading by means of stolons; culms 15-60 cm high. Leaf-blades flat, 2-30 cm long, 2-5 mm wide, the margin ± cartilaginous and usually bearing stiff hairs; sheaths of the vegetative shoots often keeled and flabellately interleaved to form compact fascicles. Panicle ± pyramidal, usually spreading, 3-20 cm long; primary branches in 4-8 whorls, with side branches 3-15 mm long from the upper two-thirds to three-quarters, sometimes reddish. Spikelets 1.5-2.2 mm long, smooth or scaberulous, grey-green to pallid, rarely purplish; lower glume oblong, 0.2-0.8 mm long, a quarter to a third as long as the upper, obtuse; upper glume oblong-elliptic, nearly as long as the spikelet; lemma similar to the upper glume; anthers 3, 0.7-1 mm long. Grain ellip¬soid, 0.6-1 mm long.