Plants annual or perennial. Culms 10-70 cm. Sheaths open, glabrous, usually longer than the internodes; ligules membranous or hyaline, truncate to obtuse, often decurrent; blades flat to involute, abaxial surfaces glabrous, sometimes scabrous, adaxial surfaces shortly pubescent. Inflorescences terminal, panicles, exceeding the leaves; branches spreading to ascending; pedicels capillary, lax, minutely glandular just below the spikelets. Spikelets with 1 floret, slightly laterally compressed, grayish-green; disarticulation above the glumes. Glumes subequal, ovate to obtuse, faintly 1-veined, glabrous; lemmas slightly longer and firmer than the glumes, 3-veined, veins and margins densely sericeous, hairs 0.1-0.7(1) mm, apices acute to obtuse, occasionally mucronate; paleas 2-veined, densely villous between the veins; anthers 3, purplish. x = 8. Name from the Greek blepharis, eyelash, and neuron, nerve, a reference to the sericeous veins of the lemmas.