Extremely slender annual or ephemeral plants 3–20 (–60) cm high. Culms branched, glabrous or with short stiff tubercle-based hairs; nodes bearded. Leaves mainly basal, hispid with tubercle-based hairs; sheaths more than half as long as culm internodes; blade to 25 cm long, setaceous. Inflorescences loose or rather dense, often with less than 10 spikelets, 0.5–2 cm long, 0.8–1 cm wide (including awns). Glumes 3–5.5 (–6.5) mm long, muticous (upper glume beaked), 9–11-nerved, hispid and tuberculate between nerves. Florets distinctly shorter than glumes. Callus mostly bearded with hairs only on back. Lemma 2–4 mm long (including callus), shortly acute, awned, 5–7-nerved (nerves sometimes ribbed or prominent only near apex or margins), without grooves, hirsute in longitudinal tufts on either side of midnerve in lower 1/2–2/3 with simple hairs reaching or exceeding lemma apex, glabrous and smooth above, ciliate on margins in lower 2/3–3/4; awn 2–6 (–8) mm long, straight. Palea with entire or notched beak, muticous, with sparse appressed pubescence between keels throughout or only in lower 1/2–2/3, or sometimes glabrous or almost so. Caryopsis 1–2 mm long.
Occurs in damp and seasonally wet sites such as flood plains, smallwatercourses, seepage, and broad shallow depressions, in finetextured, oftenwhite sand, silty sand and sandy loam; recorded also from well-drainedlateritic gravel, sand-filled cracks, creeklines on rocky sandstone hills andplateaux, and margins of Melaleuca swamps.
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