Tufted perennial; culms 10-120 cm high, erect or ascending from a prostrate base. Leaf-blades 8-30 cm long, 4-13 mm wide, flat or folded, blunt at the tip and sometimes hooded. Inflorescence 8-30 cm long; racemes 1-2.5(3) cm long, distant by 2-4 times their own length, their rhachis very narrowly winged from a triquetrous midrib, 0.5-0.8 mm wide, glabrous or minutely ciliate. Spikelets ovate, gibbously globose, 2-3 mm long; lower glume truncate or ± orbicular, a third to half as long as the spikelet; upper glume half to three-quarters as long as the spikelet; lower floret with a palea, its lemma as long as the spikelet the nerves not raised; upper lemma granulose.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: July-October.

Type: Ceylon, Koenig..

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); tropical Asia.

Panicum flavidum is eaten by horses and cattle and it produces a large quantity of grain that has been eaten by man in times of want. It is a shade-loving species found in forest undergrowth, roadside ditches and damp hollows, below 1000 m.