Caespitose perennial with short oblique rhizome, occasionally annual (Namibia only to date); culms up to 75 cm tall, erect, usually unbranched, rarely branched, glabrous at the nodes, occasionally with punctate glands below the nodes; basal leaf sheaths thinly pubescent, chartaceous, terete or somewhat compressed, sometimes glandular on the midnerve, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 3–15 cm × 1–2.5(4) mm, linear, flat or involute, glabrous, eglandular.
Panicle 5–11 cm long, narrowly elliptic to ovate, loose and open or with the spikelets condensed about the primary branches on pedicels 0.5–1.5 mm long, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular or rarely with crateriform glands.
Caryopsis c. 1 mm long, oblong-elliptic.