Perennial, forming tussocks from a woody rootstock; culms 10-60 cm high, ascending, wiry with narrow leaves or herbaceous and leafy. Leaf-blades flat or involute, 2-15 cm long, 1-5 mm wide. Panicle usually narrowly oblong, 3-15 cm long, fairly dense. Spikelets 2.5-35 mm long; lower glume a minute truncate scale (rarely up to 0.5 mm ); upper glume ovate, tuberculate pilose with white hairs extending 0.54 mm beyond the tip, but often glabrous in the upper quarter, acute and usually mucronate; lower lemma resembling the upper glume.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: April-May and again from September through to December or January.

Type: Teneriffe, Masson (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab & N.W.F.P.); tropical East Africa northwards to the Mediterranean: thence westwards to the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and eastwards to India.

This is a species that grows in the most inhospitable places but with no known value as a fodder grass. No doubt some desert grazing animals will eat it.