Tufted perennial, often producing ascending aerial stolons, culms erect, to c. 1 m high, glabrous or pilose, with a glandular band below nodes. Leaves smooth; blade flat, folded or inrolled, to 30 cm long and 4 mm wide, glabrous or sparsely pilose near base; sheath glabrous to pilose, with glandular pits near base, and sometimes along midrib; ligule 0.4–1 mm long. Inflorescence a narrow-ovoid panicel, to c. 30 cm long and 12 cm wide, lower branches usually paired or few in a whorl. Spikelets 5–8(–10)-flowered, 3–5.5 mm long and c. 1 mm wide, leaden-green coloured; glumes membranous, minutely scabrous along the keel, acute, but soon shredding, 1.3–2 mm long, subequal, the upper usually slightly longer than lower; lemma 1.2–1.6 mm long, very obtuse to truncate; palea subequal to lemma; anthers c. 1 mm long. Flowers Nov.–Jan.
MuM. Also naturalised NT, Qld, NSW. Native to Africa. Relatively recently (from c. 2000) naturalised in Australia, but rapidly spreading. Known in Victoria from a few roadsides in the far north-west.
