Slender annual plants 5–30 cm high. Culms branched, often fastigiate, glabrous, often reddish; nodes 4–6, glabrous. Leaves: sheaths much shorter than culm internodes, glabrous; blade 2.5–4 cm long, pilose with simple and tubercle-based hairs and scabrous on upper surface, glabrous and smooth on lower surface, with margins scaberulous. Panicles compact, 0.5–2.5 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide. Glumes 5–6 mm long, muticous or with mucro to 1 mm long, 9–11-nerved, scabrous (on upper part) or smooth, glabrous. Florets subequal to glumes (usually slightly shorter), slightly unequal. Callus entirely bearded. Lemma 4–4.5 mm long, awned, membranous with narrow hyaline margins, 7-nerved, without grooves, hirsute in lower 1/2–2/3 with simple hairs, glabrous and scabrous or granular above, ciliate or scabrous on submargins near apex; awn 3–4 mm long. Palea entire, muticous, hirsute in lower 1/3–1/2, glabrous and scabrous or granular above. Caryopsis 1.2–1.6 mm long.
Occurs in damp orseasonally wet sites near streams, rock pools and in seepage zones, in oftenshallow sand or silt, in association with sandstone plateaux, outcrops and escarpments,and sometimes in rock cracks of sandstone outcrops.
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