Plants annual. Culms 3-35 cm, ascending to erect, often branched at the lowest nodes, glabrous; nodes purple. Ligules membranous; auricles absent; blades involute, nearly filiform. Inflorescences slender, distichous, terminal spikes, with solitary spikelets sunken in the rachises, spikelets occasionally paired, upper spikelets shortly pedicellate (very rarely 3 or 4 spikelets per node); disarticulation above the glumes and beneath the florets. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 1 floret; rachillas prolonged beyond the florets. Glumes exceeding the florets, glabrous, 2-keeled, unawned, reddish- or purplish-tinged; lower glumes longer and narrower than the upper glumes, 2-3-veined; upper glumes 3-4-veined; calluses pubescent; lemmas membranous, inconspicuously 5-veined, shortly bifid, awned from the sinus; paleas tightly clasped by the lemmas; anthers 1. Caryopses about 2.5 mm, fusiform; hila punctiform; embryos about 1/4 the length of the caryopses. x = 13. Named for Frank Lamson Scribner (1851-1938), an American agrostologist.