Plants annual. Culms to 4 m, relatively stout. Rames usually tardily disarticulating, mostly with 3-5 nodes. Sessile spikelets 5-6 mm, lanceolate to elliptic. Caryopses not exposed at maturity.

The hybrids treated here as Sorghum bicolor subsp. drummondii are most common in the Eastern Hemisphere, but a few are cultivated in the United States. Among these are the plants known as 'chicken corn' and 'Sudangrass' [= S. sudanense (Piper) Stapf] (de Wet 1978).