Annual or sometimes short-lived perennial, varying from a prostrate creeper to a leafy upright plant; culms 10-60 cm high, ascending from a stoloniferous base. Leaf-blades 1-9 cm long, 1-5 mm wide, the blades and sheaths usually glabrous but occasionally hirsute. Inflorescence composed of 24 (typically 2) digitate racemes; racemes 1-10 cm long, the spikelets ternate on a ribbon-like winged rhachis with low rounded midrib; pedicels terete, smooth, with discoid or cupuliform tip. Spikelets narrowly ovate-elliptic, 1.2-1.8 mm long; lower glume a minute hyaline rim; upper glume as long as the spikelet, 5-nerved, with short appressed verrucose hairs between the nerves (sometimes glabrous between 1st and 2nd lateral nerves); lower lemma as long as the spikelet, 7-nerved, pubescent with verrucose hairs or these appressed and barely visible (sometimes glabrous beside midrib and between 2nd and 3rd nerves); fruit ellipsoid, pallid, light brown or light grey.

Type: India, Koenig (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab); throughout the Old World tropics; introduced to the New World.

Digitaria fuscescens (Presl) Henr is doubtfully distinct, differing only in its glabrous spikelets. It occurs in Southeast Asia as far west as eastern India.