Annual. Stems very slender, glabrous or somewhat pubescent, usually retrorsely scabrid, sometimes almost smooth, nodeless or 1-noded below the inflorescence, (10-)30-80 cm by 1-2 mm. Leaves (i.e. those not subtending a panicle) often all reduced to bladeless or shortly bladed sheaths, sometimes (like the lower primary bracts) well developed, rather suddenly narrowed to the obtusish tip, scabrid on the margins and the main nerves in the upper part, 2-5 mm wide; sheaths narrow, wingless, sparsely pubescent; contraligule short, broadly rounded, ciliate. Inflorescence occupying by far the greater part of the stem, narrow, consisting of 3-5 very remote, dense partial panicles; terminal panicle 2-3 cm long, lateral ones somewhat smaller, usually binate at the nodes, more or less nodding, their peduncles much exserted from the sheaths, filiform (but 2-winged at the dilated apex), often purplish; primary bracts longer than the panicles in their [NOTE: Due to a typesetting error, a line was not printed in the original volume] setaceous, often curved. Spikelets shortly peduncled (peduncles 1-2 mm long), either ♂ and ♀ or ♂ and bisexual; ♂ spikelets linear-lanceolate, 3-4 mm long; stamens 2(-3); anthers linear, 1-1½ mm long; nutbearing spikelets 4½-5 mm long, unisexual or with some ♂ flowers besides the ♀ one; glumes ovate, acute or mucronulate, scabrid on the keel, pale ferrugineous with green keel. Cupula shallowly 3-lobed, c. 1 mm wide. Disk triangular, shallowly 3-lobed, appressed; lobes obtuse, with very narrow, reflexed margins, abruptly ending in a short, stiff, erect, subulate mucro, pale ferrugineous. Nut shorter than the glumes, elliptic-oblong, obscurely to obtusely trigonous, rugulose, somewhat tuberculate at the top, sparsely pubescent, apiculate, dull, white, 2⅓-2½ by 1¾-2 mm.
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