Plants with long, wiry stolons. Culms 8-15 cm, clustered, erect, with numerous short, leafy, lateral branches. Leaves clustered on distant to closely-spaced, short, lateral shoots; sheaths 4-6 mm, rounded, smooth, shiny, glabrous or puberulent at the base; ligules thickly membranous ciliate rims; blades 0.5-1.5 cm long, 1-2(3) mm wide, stiff, subulate, uniformly many-veined. Inflorescences terminal, composed of a single glabrous spikelet, this enclosed, and almost concealed, by the uppermost leaf sheaths. Pistillate spikelets subterete, with 3-5 florets, distal florets rudimentary; disarticulation tardy, below the lowest floret; glumes absent; lemmas coriaceous, glabrous, 9-veined, acute; paleas coriaceous, keels prominently winged, wings overlapping and enclosing the caryopses. Staminate spikelets similar to the pistillate spikelets, but smaller and the glumes and lemmas thinner. x = 10. Name from the Greek monos, single, anthos, flower, and chloë, grass, alluding to the solitary spikelets. 2n = 40.
Distichlis littoralis grows in moist, sandy, saline soils along the coast of southern California and the southeastern United States, northeastern Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. It was previously placed in Monanthochloë but Bell and Columbus (2008) demonstrated that Monanthochloë is nested within Distichlis.