Slender leafy annual plants 20–52 cm high. Culms branched, densely hispid with thickened tuberclebased hairs, densely scabrous-pubescent with hairs often retrorse; nodes pubescent or bearded. Leaves hispid and scabrous-pubescent like culms; sheaths much shorter than culm internodes; blade to 4 cm long, to 3 mm wide, smooth on upper surface. Panicles contracted, becoming open, 2–10.5 cm long, 1–14 cm wide. Glumes 2.5–4 mm long (excluding mucro), almost as wide as long, usually obtuse, usually with mucro 0.3–1 mm long, 7–9 (–11)-nerved, scaberulous between nerves or smooth, glabrous or upper glume sometimes sparsely hairy. Florets equal to or exceeding glumes by 1 mm; lemma and palea appressed (rarely apically divergent). Callus entirely bearded. Lemma 2.5–3.5 mm long, acuminate, awned, membranous, with 5 ribbed nerves, without grooves, hirsute or sometimes sparsely hairy in lower 1/3–3/4 with hairs sometimes reaching or exceeding lemma apex, ciliate on margins almost to lemma apex, glabrous and smooth above or scaberulous near apex; awn 0.6–4.5 mm long. Palea as long as lemma body, bifid from keels, (sometimes sparsely) pubescent or long-pubescent between keels. Caryopsis 1.5–2.5 mm long.
Common in skeletal, often gravelly, soils over sandstone, laterite, quartzite,conglomerate and shale, on hillslopes, ridges and rocky plateaux; recorded alsofrom disturbed ground, flood plains, red-brown sandy loams, sand dunes and sandyclay pindan plains.
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