Tall slender annual; culms 30-70cm high, erect or geniculately ascending. Leaf-blades flat, 7-15cm long, 15-4mm wide, flaccid, tapering to a stout tip, rounded at the base, scaberulous on the margins; ligule blunt, 1-3mm long. Panicle pyramidal, 12-20cm long, lax, nodding; branches paired, erect, spreading or finally deflexed, scaberulous. Spikelets 3-4-flowered, broadly elliptic when young, becoming broadly wedge-shaped, 3-5mm long, green; glumes unequal, the lower awl-shaped in side-view, 2.5-3mm long, 1-nerved, the upper elliptic or oblong, 25-4mm long, 3-nerved; lemmas oblong-elliptic in side view, 2.5-3.5mm long, subacute, ciliate on the keel and marginal nerves or the latter glabrescent, with copious wool at the base; palea shorther than the lemma, the keels ciliate below, scabrid above; anthers 0.5-lmm long.