Annuals or perennials. Flowering culms 3.5–20 (–55) cm high, 1–3-noded. Leaves: basal sheaths glabrous or sparsely pilose, with margins glabrous; orifice usually bearded; ligule a ciliate membrane, 0.1–2 mm long; blade flat or folded or convolute, 1–7.5 cm long, 0.5–1.3 mm wide, glabrous or sparsely to densely pilose. Inflorescences 2–9.5 (–17) cm long. Spikelets linear or narrowly oblong, 4–12 (–22) mm long, with 6–20 florets, with 5–18 bisexual florets, green or greygreen or purple. Glumes unequal to equal in length, lanceolate to ovate; lower glume 1–3.2 (–5) mm long; upper glume 2–3.5 (–5.2) mm long, 1-or 3-nerved. Basal lemma elliptic or lanceolate to ovate, 1.9–3.5 (–4.5) mm long, 1-awned from sinus, 3-nerved, glabrous; awn 0.6–1 mm long, shorter than lemma body, straight. Palea shorter than the lemma body, elliptic; body glabrous; keels ciliolate. Caryopsis lanceolate, 1–2.2 mm long, 0.2–0.5 mm wide.
In a variety of habitats: rocky slopes, plateaux and outcrops of granite andsandstone in skeletal reddish soils with spinifex; on plains in red sand orsandy to clayey loams in open Acacia woodlands especially mulga;depressions and creek lines on gibber plains with chenopods; flood plains inred to brown clayey soils in open eucalypt woodland; rocky slopes and outcropsof granite in pockets of sandy loam in eucalypt forest or Callitris and eucalypt woodland with a grassy understorey.
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