Robust annual; culms 30-150 cm high, erect. leaf-blades often broad, 5-30 cm long, 3-20 mm wide; ligule absent; sheaths glabrous. Inflorescence lanceolate, 6-20 cm long, the racemes several-rowed with crowded spikelets, 1-3 cm long, simple, closely spaced and overlapping. Spikelets broadly elliptic to rotund, 2.5-3.5 mm long, plump and sometimes gaping, ± tardily deciduous, mostly yellowish or pallid, pubescent to hispid; lower lemma acute; upper lemma 2-3 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: Mainly September-October, but also sporadically earlier in the year.

Type: India, Roxburgh (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan & Punjab); tropical East Africa south-wards to Rhodesia; India; Australia.

Echinochloa frumentacea is cultivated in the hotter parts of Asia and Africa. Yabuno (in Cytologia 27:296-305.1962; and in Jap. J. Bot. 19:277-323.1966) discusses its cytology and regards it as a derivative of Echinochloa colona. These two species are distinct enough in Asia, but in Africa, where Echinochloa frumentacea occurs spontaneously, they intergrade with one another and are separated rather arbitrarily according to the density of the inflorescence.