Compactly tufted perennials; base leafy, fibrous, glabrous. Culms erect, 20–90 cm high, sometimes branched and fastigiate, usually glandular below nodes. Leaves: sheath sometimes with scattered pitted glands; ligule 0.1–0.3 mm long; blade loosely convolute (rarely flat and to 2.2 mm wide), straight, pilose with tubercle-based hairs. Panicles open, 9–40 cm long, 3–21 cm wide; primary branches without spikelets in lower quarter. Spikelets pedicellate (pedicels often with glandular bands), lanceolate, 4–14 mm long, 1–2.2 mm wide, often olive-green; rachilla straight, thick; florets 6–20, tightly overlapping, becoming loose. Glumes unequal, often purple; lower glume linearlanceolate, 1–1.6 mm long; upper glume lanceolate, 1.5–1.9 mm long. Lemma lanceolate, 1.5–2.4 mm long, acute or obtuse, cartilaginous, 3-nerved with lateral nerves near margins, often glossy. Palea: body spathulate, ciliolate at apex; keels thickened; flaps distinctly narrower than body. Stamens 3; anthers 0.3–0.8 mm long. Grain quadrangular, oblong, 0.5–1.2 mm long, grooved, striate, reddish brown.
Occurs in a variety of soils from deep black clays to sands, in association with basalt, granite and laterite, in forest and grassland clearings, waste ground and plantations.
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