Plants with C₄ photosynthesis, annual (perennial elsewhere), sometimes with stolons, forming clumps. Flowering stems usually spreading in the basal portion and rooting at the lower nodes, the tips ascending, glabrous or hairy at the nodes. Leaf sheaths, at least the lowermost ones, hairy, especially along the margins, the ligule a minute membrane with a fringe of hairs along the margin. Leaf blades usually flat, glabrous or hairy, sometimes hairy only at the base, the base rounded or abruptly narrowed. Inflorescences panicles with the primary branches usually unbranched, consisting of somewhat or strongly 1‑sided, spikelike racemes, these with a spikelet at the tip (a thickened, cuplike base remaining after the spikelet disarticulates). Spikelets 4–6 mm long, not subtended by bristles or spines, disarticulating below the glumes, without a cuplike ring or knoblike disk at the base. Lower glume ovate, partially wrapped around the spikelet base, awnless, 5‑ or 7‑nerved, glabrous. Upper glume about as long as the rest of the spikelet, elliptic‑ovate, not inflated, bluntly to sharply pointed at the tip, awnless, 5‑nerved, glabrous or somewhat hairy toward the margins. Lowermost floret sterile or staminate, the lemma about as long as the rest of the spikelet, elliptic‑ovate, sharply pointed at the tip, awnless, 5‑nerved, glabrous or hairy. Fertile floret with the lemma elliptic to elliptic‑ovate, rounded or pointed at the tip, sometimes with a small, sharp, hornlike point, the tip not differentiated from the body, awnless, nerveless or obscurely nerved, glabrous, shiny, with noticeable, fine cross‑wrinkles, thickened and relatively hard (usually somewhat bonelike) at maturity, the margins not thinner or lighter colored, noticeably wrapped around the palea and fruit, usually enclosing the palea tip (after flowering). Paleas glabrous, slightly shorter than and similar in texture to the lemma. Fruits oblong‑elliptic in outline. One hundred to 110 species, nearly worldwide, mostly in tropical and warm‑temperate regions.

For a discussion of generic limits in Urochloa and the closely related Brachiaria, see the treatment of that genus.