Loosely tufted annual; culms 10-90 cm high, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades flat, up to 15 cm long and 8 mm wide, mostly glabrous and usually with a row of warty glands along the margin. Panicle ovate, 4-30 cm long, fairly dense, contracted, stiffly branched, usually with glands on pedicels and branchlets. Spikelets 5-60-flowered, narrowly ovate to narrowly oblong, rarely linear, 3-20 min long, 2-4 mm wide, pallid yellowish green to leaden grey, breaking up from the base, the rhachilla often breaking off above the glumes before all the lemmas have fallen; glumes subequal, oval, boat-shaped, 1.5-2.2 mm long, 1-3-nerved, often glandular on the keel, acute; lemmas broadly ovate to subrotund, (1.7)2-2.8 mm long, chartaceous, often glandular on the keel, the lateral nerves distinct, emarginate or obtuse (occasionally bluntly acute) when flattened, usually obtuse in side-view; palea ± scabrid on the keels, persistent; anthers 3, 0.3 mm long. Caryopsis typically subglobose, 0.5(0.7) mm long, rarely oblong, dark reddish brown.