Rhizomatous perennial; culms up to 15 cm high, erect or creeping at the base. Leaf-blades narrow, spreading, subdistichous, up to 4 cm long, 2-3 mm wide, rigid, pungent, glabrous or pilose, margins scabrid. Panicle a globose, elliptic or oblong head of densely crowded spikelets, up to 2 cm long, 1-1.5 cm wide. Spikelets 4-8-flowered, elliptic-oblong, 2.5-3.5 mm long, 2-2.5 mm wide. Glumes elliptic, unequal, villous, the lower 1-3-nerved, about 1.5 mm long, the upper 3-5-nerved, about 2 mm long; lemmas broadly elliptic, apiculate, 9-nerved, 2.4-2.8 mm long, villous; lowest lemmas sometimes empty; anthers 1.5 mm long.

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

Type: India, Burman.

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan & Punjab); northern Africa from Morocco to Somalia; Sicily and Cyprus through the Middle East to Central Asia and India.

A plant of very arid places, especially salt-impregnated soils; sometimes on sandy, often damp soils, low-lying flats fringing salt-marshes, by sulphureous springs, on waste-land and in abandoned cultivated areas.