Perennial; culms 10-150 cm high, 1-6 mm in diameter, 2-17-noded, the nodes commonly exposed, erect, or ascending from a procumbent base and rooting at the lower nodes. Leaf-blades linear, 5-40 cm long, 3-15 mm wide, tapering to a filiform tip. Inflorescence composed of 1-20 racemes, these digitate or borne on an axis up to 8 cm long, the lowest raceme 4-15 cm long, with spikelets borne singly on a ribbon-like rhachis 1-2.5 mm wide. Spikelets broadly elliptic, obovate or suborbicular, 1.4-3 mm long, green, becoming brown; lower glume absent; upper glume papery; lower lemma similar or rarely coriaceous, 3-5-nerved (in the latter case the nerves evenly spaced or the laterals close together); upper lemma finely striate, brown at maturity.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: April-May and again October-December.

Type: India, cult. at Uppsala (LINN).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind); throughout the Old World tropics.

This is a highly polymorphic species, but with the variation apparently quite continuous; possibly it is a swarm of apomicts (see Clayton 1975).

It is sometimes cultivated as a hot weather crop, but under certain conditions the grain and fodder can be harmful.