Tufted perennial with silky hairy basal sheaths; culms ascending, 15-80 cm high, wiry. Leaf-blades very narrow, 1-15 cm long, 1-3 mm wide, flat or rolled, green or glaucous. Inflorescence a solitary raceme subtended by a narrow spatheole, these loosely aggregated on the culms; raceme 1.5-4.5 cm long, with 0-1 smaller homogamous pairs of spikelets at the base. Sessile spikelet narrowly elliptic, 2.5-4 mm long; lower glume cartilaginous, glabrous, shining, with a circular depression in the upper third, acute; upper lemma entire or minutely bidentate, its awn 12-18 mm long. Pedicelled spikelet with or without a pit.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: March-September or December.

Type: Egypt, Delile (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Kenya, Mali and North Africa, eastwards through the Middle East and Somalia to India and Sri Lanka.

The form with an unpitted pedicelled spikelet has been treated as a distinct species (Eremopogon strictus) but Bor (Grasses Burma Ceyl. Ind. Pak. 149) has shown that it cannot be satisfactorily distinguished from Dichanthium foveolatum.