Plants perennial; rhizomatous. Culms 10-50 cm, decumbent; nodes glabrous or pubescent. Sheaths glabrous; ligules2-2.5 mm; blades to 12 cm long, 1.3-4.8 mm wide, flat. Panicles terminal, with 2-6 racemosely arranged branches; branches 1.3-5.3 cm, diverging to erect, often arcuate, persistent; branch axes 1.8-3 mm wide, broadly winged, usually conduplicate, glabrous, margins scabrous, terminating in a spikelet. Spikelets 1.7-2.1 mm long, 1.1-1.4 mm wide, solitary, appressed to the branch axes, elliptic to ovate, glabrous, stramineous. Lower glumes absent; upper glumes and lower lemmas 5-veined; upper florets stramineous, lemmas glabrous throughout. Caryopses 1-1.3 mm, white. 2n = 40, 60.
Paspalum dissectum grows at the edges of lakes, ponds, rice fields, and wet roadside ditches. It is native to the eastern portion of the contiguous United States and Cuba.