Tufted annual; culms 25-110 cm high, slender, geniculately ascending. Leaf-blades linear, flat, up to 25 cm long, 7 mm wide, long-attenuate; leaf-sheaths and both surfaces of the blades papillate-pilose, the hairs spreading. Inflorescence elliptic to oblong, often purplish, 20-30 cm long, composed of numerous straight slender ascending racemes 4-11 cm long scattered along the central axis. Spikelets 2-5(usually 3)-flowered, narrowly elliptic, 1.9-25 mm long, overlapping; glumes subequal, shorter than the lemmas, lower glume lanceolate, 0.7-1.5 mm long, acute, upper glume narrowly oblong, 0.9-1.6 mm long, obtuse and mucronate; lemmas elliptic oblong, 0.8-1.2 mm long, minutely hairy on the back, bluntly 2-toothed. Caryopsis broadly elliptic, 0.5 mm long, brown, obtusely trigonous in cross-section.

Type: China, Bladh (LD).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Punjab & N W.F.P.); Sudan to Transvaal and Natal; West Africa and tropical Asia.

A weed of cultivated ground. It is often confused with Leptochloa filiformis (Lam.) P. Beauv. a native of warm temperate and tropical America which has long acuminate glumes only slightly shorter than the spikelet and glabrous lemmas. Leptochloa contracta (Retz.) Blatter & McCann, Bombay Grasses 243. 1935 is based on Poa contracta Retz., Obs. Bot. 3:11. 1783 which, according to Bor, Grasses Burma Ceyl. Ind. Pak. 517, is Diplachne fusca (Linn.) P. Beauv.

Leptochloa chinensis (Linn.) Nees in Syll. Ratisb. 1:4. 1824, differs from Leptochloa panacea in having 3-6, rather than 2-3 florets per spikelet and longer glumes. It is found over much of Southeast Asia, but is reported from Pakistan in error.