Tufted annual; culms (17-)30-90 cm high, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades linear to narrowly lanceolate, 7-30 cm long, 4-9 mm wide, flat, hispid with tubercle-based hairs, blunt or occasionally sharply acute; sheaths glabrous below, usually hispid above with tubercle-based hairs, especially on the margins. Panicle ovate or oblong, 10-25(-40) cm long. Spikelets oblong-elliptic, 2.8-3.5 mm long, glabrous, widely gaping at anthesis and remaining so to maturity, shortly acuminate; lower glume broadly ovate, two-thirds the length of the spikelet, 5-nerved, cuspidate-acuminate; upper glume 7-9-nerved, often cuspidate; lower lemma 7-nerved, it; palea about two-thirds as long; upper lemma yellowish-white, smooth and shining.

Type locality: India.

Distribution: Pakistan (N.W.F.P. & ? Punjab); India eastwards to Southeast Asia and China.

Panicum trypheron, easily recognised by its gaping spikelets with cuspidate glumes, is a rare plant in Pakistan, at the limit of its range in Peshawar.