Plants mat-forming annuals, stoloniferous. Culms spreading, much branched, rooting at the nodes, reaching 5-15 cm high. Leaves: ligules membranous; blades upto 9.5 cm lgon, 2.5-4.5 mm wide, flat, papillose-hispid, acute. Panicles often subcapitate, central axes up to 3 cm long bearing 2-6 spikelike branches; branches 0.7-1.7 cm long, initially soreading, becoming reflexed. Spikelets with 5-9 florets, broadly blong to wedge-shaped, 6-11 mm long, yellowish green with dark green veins; lower glumes 1-5-veined, 2.9-4 mm long, narrowly lanceolate; upper glumes 11-17-veined, 5-8 mm long, lanceolate-oblong, with diverging acuminate tips; lemmas 5-7-veined, ovate, 4-7 mm long, cuspidate or stoutly mucronate; palea keels broadly winged; anthers 0.4-1.2 mm long. Grains narrowly elliptic-oblong, trigonous.
Dinebra somalensisgrows in silty or saline, and bare, sandy soil, often seasonally flooded places on open plains, sometimes forming a thin cover, at about 500 m.
Sources
Cope, T.A. 1995. Poaceae, pp. 148-270 in M. Thulin (Ed.), Flora of Somalia, vol. 4.
Phillips, S. 1995. Poaceae, in I. Hedberg and S. Edwaeds, Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea, vol. 7.