Annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 60 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 20 cm long, 2-5 mm wide, sheaths pubescent. Panicle 5-20 cm long, often suffused with purple, usually loose and spreading, up to 15 cm wide; branches ± whorled, l-4-spiculate, sometimes a little shorter than the spikelets but generally much longer, filiform and flexuous. Spikelets narrowly elliptic, 6-14-flowered, (15-)30-50 mm long excluding the awns, the lemmas overlapping and concealing the internodes; glumes glabrous or minutely hispidulous, the lower narrowly lanceolate, (8-)9-11 mm long, 3(-sub-5)-nerved, the upper narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 9-13 mm long, 5-7-nerved; lemmas narrowly elliptic in side view, the lower 12-18 mm long, herbaceous with broad hyaline margins not widened above the middle into an obtuse angle, 7-nerved, glabrous or minutely hispidulous, 2-toothed at the tip with acuminate teeth 1.5-2.5 mm long; awn subapical, flattened especially at the base, 15-30 mm long, longer than the lemma, erect at first, becoming reflexed and slightly twisted at maturity, palea shorter than the lemma, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 1.5-2 mm long.