Annual; culms 20-80 cm high, geniculately ascending from a decumbent base. Leaf-blades broadly linear to lanceolate, 3-25 cm long, 3-12 mm wide. Inflorescence composed of 3-15 racemes arranged on a common axis 1-6 cm long, or digitate in the smaller plants; racemes 4-15 cm long, the spikelets binate and overlapping by ± two-thirds their length on a narrowly winged rhachis with triquetrous midrib, this sometimes bearing a few long glistening hairs; pedicels triquetrous with truncate tip. Spikelets lanceolate to elliptic-lanceolate, 2-3.5 mm long; lower glume absent or very obscure; upper glume one-eighth to one-third (rarely up to half) as long as the spikelet, oblong or triangular, nerveless to sub-3-nerved; lower lemma as long as the spikelet, 7-nerved, the nerves evenly spaced or with a wide central interspace, appressedly or silky pubescent, rarely with a ciliate frill, very rarely with stiff bristles; fruit lanceolate, grey to yellowish-brown.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: September.

Type: India, Heyne (B).

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab & Kashmir); Tanzania, Mauritius and the Seychelles; through Asia to the Pacific Islands.

Specimens with glassy bristles on one or both spikelets of a pair are sometimes segregated as var. calliblepharata but the character does not seem to be of much taxonomic consequence in Digitaria.