Annual or short-lived perennial without rhizomes or stolons; culms up to 80 cm tall, erect, unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, occasionally with punctate glands below the nodes; basal leaf sheaths glabrous, chartaceous, terete or somewhat compressed, sometimes glandular on the midnerve, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 8–15 cm × 1.5–2.5 mm, linear, flat or folded, glabrous, eglandular.
Panicle 15–22 cm long, broadly elliptic to ovate, loose and open, the spikelets evenly distributed along the flexuous branches and branchlets on pedicels 1–2 mm long, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous or thinly pilose in the axils, eglandular.
Caryopsis c. 1 mm long, oblong-elliptic.