Plants annual. Culms 40–50 cm tall, 5- or 6-noded, glabrous. Leaf sheath glabrous; ligule yellowish brown, ca. 1 mm, apex truncate; auricles present, 2–3 mm; leaf blade 5–10 × 0.4–0.6 cm. Spike distichous, greenish to dark brown, slightly compressed, 4–6 × ca. 1 cm; rachis ca. 3 mm, brittle, densely pubescent. Lateral spikelets: pedicellate, sterile; pedicel ca. 2 mm; lemma apex rounded-obtuse, cuspidate, very shortly awned, or with awn 6–10 mm. Central spikelets: sessile, 1–1.4 cm; glumes linear-lanceolate, densely hairy, apex tapering into slender, scabrous awn; lemma broadly elliptic, glabrous, apex prolonged into flat, very scabrous awn 5–17 cm. Fl. and fr. Apr–Jun.

Thickets, stony screes, pebbles, roadsides, waste places, often as a weed in cultivated fields of Hordeum and other crops; 3500–4000 m. Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan [Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; NE Africa, SW Asia].