Plants annual. Culms 20-75 cm, erect, often branched above. Sheaths glabrous; ligules membranous, ciliate; blades to 15 cm long, 2-5 mm wide, sometimes with basal hairs, otherwise glabrous or scabrous. Panicles digitate, with 4-13 easily separable or evidently distinct branches; branches 5-11 cm, initially erect, becoming divaricate, with 10-14 spikelets per cm. Spikelets pectinate, diverging at a wide angle from the branch axes, with 1 bisexual and 1 staminate floret. Lower glumes 1.4-2.5 mm; upper glumes 2.9-4.3 mm; lowest lemmas 3-6.2 mm long, 0.4-0.6 mm wide, linear to narrowly lanceolate, margins glabrous, scabrous, or with hairs less than 0.2 mm, lemma apices bilobed, lobes 0.5-1 mm, sometimes awned, central awns 4-37 mm, awns of lateral lobes, if present, less than 0.6 mm; second florets 1.7-2.9 mm long, 0.2-0.3 mm wide, laterally compressed, bilobed, lobes 1/3-1/2 as long as the lemmas, awned, awns 4-10 mm. Caryopses about 2.3 mm long, about 0.3 mm wide, narrowly ellipsoid, trigonous. 2n = unknown.

Chloris pectinata is an Australian species that was collected around woolen mills in South Carolina in the first half of the twentieth century.