Perennial, spreading by long slender rhizomes; culms 10-30 cm high, 1-2 mm in diameter at the base. Leaf-blades nearly always convolute, 2-10 cm long, 1-4 mm wide, distichous, stiff, pungent. Panicle spike-like, linear, 2-10 cm long, (3-) 6-8(-l0) mm wide, untidily cylindrical, the branches closely appressed to the rhachis and 5-15 mm long. Spikelets 1.7-2.5 mm long; lower glume lanceolate, 1.2-2 mm long, two-thirds to four-fifths as long as the spikelet (variable even in the same panicle), acute; upper glume narrowly ovate-elliptic, as long as the spikelet, acute; lemma as long as the upper glume; anthers 3, 1-1.3 mm long. Grain subglobose, 0.7 mm long.

Type: U.S.A., Virginia (BM).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind); tropics and subtropics throughout the world.

A plant of sandy sea-shores; rarely on saline soils inland.