Erect, robust, green or ± glaucous annual tufts, 30-100 cm. Leaf-sheath firm, subcoriaceous, shortly pubescent or glabrous, green or straw-coloured. Auricles 2-3.5 mm, pale green to pinkish, usually ciliate-margined. Ligule 0.6-4 mm, hyaline, truncate, shortly denticulate and minutely ciliate. Leaf-blade 4-30 cm × 2-12 mm, abaxially smooth, adaxially minutely scabrid, margins finely scabrid, tip acuminate and slightly hooded. Culm 25-80 cm, internodes smooth or minutely scabrid. Spike distichous, linear-oblong, lax- to dense-flowered, 4-9 × 1-2.5 cm; rachis tough, margins ± ciliate. Spikelets 3-6-flowered. Glumes 7-10 mm, coriaceous, or pubescent, especially on margins below, truncate, keel with sparse prickle-teeth produced above to a short tooth or awn. Lemma 9.5-12 mm, coriaceous and rigid, 7-nerved, acute and awnless or awned between 2 small lobes; awn 1-50-(70) mm, scabrid. Palea ≈ lemma, not folded, submembranous, keels hairy, interkeel with some small hairs especially below, margins membranous, meeting, glabrous. Rachilla 1-1.5 mm, hairy. Lodicules 1.5-1.75 mm, long ciliate. Anthers 2.5-4 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 2 mm; stigma-styles short 1-1.5 mm. Caryopsis 7-7.5 × 3.4-3.8 mm, ellipsoid, ovate-ellipsoid or ovoid, variously coloured; embryo 2.5 mm. Cleistogamous, but briefly chasmogamous.