Habit: 		Coarse tufted annual.
Culms: 		15-60 cm. tall, erect, decumbent and branching at base, or spreading and prostrate,
		flattened, glabrous.
Blades: 	Flat or folded, 7-30 cm. long, 3-8 mm. wide.
Sheaths: 	Loose, much overlapping below, flattened, sparsely hairy or glabrous.
Ligule:		Hairy.
Inflorescence:	Spikes 2-10, crowded at the summit of the stem, 2-8 cm. long, whorled,
		or one of them inserted lower down, axis pubescent or pilose.
Spikelets: 	3-5 mm. long, 3-6-flowered, flattened, numerous, crowded, awnless;
		florets perfect or uppermost staminate, sessile and closely imbricate in 2 rows
		along one side of a continuous rachis, which does not extend beyond the terminal
		spikelet; rachilla disarticulating above the glumes and between the florets.
Glumes: 	Acute, flattened, thin, scabrous on the keel, scarious, the first 1-nerved,
		narrow, 2-2.5 mm. long, the second 3-7-nerved, broader, about 3 mm. long.
Lemmas: 	3-4 mm. long, subotuse, 3 strong nerves close together forming a keel,
		an additional nerve near each margin, the terminal lemma empty.
Palea: 		Compressed, shorter than the lemma, acute, the 2 narrowly winged keels distant.
Fruit: 		Grain dark brown to black, the loose pericarp marked with comb-like lines,
		free within the subrigid lemma and palea.
Habitat: 	Waste places, fields and open ground.  June-September.
Remarks: 	A common weed.