Tufted annual; culms 6–60 cm. high, erect or ascending.. Leaf-blades 2.5–15 cm. long, 2–3 mm. wide.. Panicle ovate, 2.5–16 cm. long, moderately dense with delicate spikelets borne on slender pedicels.. Spikelets 6–30-flowered, oblong, 3.5–9 mm. long, 1.5–2 mm. wide, often prettily tinted with dark purple, breaking up from the base, the rhachilla persistent; glumes unequal, lanceolate, acute, the lower 1 mm. long, the upper 1.5 mm.; lemmas ovate, 1.5–1.8 mm. long, acute; palea scaberulous on the keels, persistent; anthers (2–)3, 0.3 mm. long.. Caryopsis subglobose, 0.3–0.5 mm. long.. Fig. 62/6, p. 196.
Caespitose annual; culms up to 60 cm tall, erect or ascending, branched or unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; leaf sheaths glabrous, eglandular; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 2–10 cm × 1.5–3 mm, linear, usually involute, sometimes flat, glabrous, eglandular.
Panicle 2.5–16 cm long, ovate or oblong-ovate, moderately dense, the spikelets evenly distributed on pedicels 2–3.5 mm long, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, thinly pilose in the axils, eglandular.
Caryopsis 0.3–0.5 mm long, subrotund.