Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or sometimes annual herbs, usually rhizomatous.

Stems: Culms erect, ascending, or rarely procumbent, terete (cylindrical) or laterally compressed.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, spirally arranged or distichous, blades sometimes reduced or absent. Surfaces glabrous or margins pubescent. Sheaths closed or open, sometimes auriculate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in glomerules or solitary, the inflorescences terminal or pseudolateral, compound, cymose, racemose, paniculate, or spike-like. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual (and then plants gynodioecious or dioecious), actinomorphic. Perianth parts 6, in 2 whorls of (2)3, bract-like, membranous or herbaceous, ± equal, distinct, persistent in fruit, often subtended by 1–3 bracteoles. Stamens 3–6, when 3, opposite the sepals; anthers oblong to linear, basifixed, dithecal, opening by longitudinal lateral slits. Pollen grains remaining in tetrads, surrounded by a common exine. Ovary superior, 3-carpellate, 1–3-celled, placentation basal, parietal, or axile; ovules 3 to numerous per cell, anatropous; style 1(3); stigmas 3.

Fruit: Fruit a globose; cylindrical; or ellipsoid; loculicidal capsules. Seeds 3 to numerous per capsule; outer seed coat whitish or pale brown; hyaline; sometimes elongated into a caruncle or tail-like extensions; often reticulate; inner seed coat brown to castaneous or yellow; endosperm starchy; surrounding a minute; central embryo.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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