Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials or annuals.

Stems: Culms usually tufted, rarely solitary, erect, trigonous, nodose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Basal or also cauline. blades linear, 1–costate or 3–costate. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths of cauline leaves long, the orifice sometimes with a short, scarious appendage opposite the blade; ligule absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences usually consisting of few to several corymbiform anthelate panicles, sometimes contracted into a single terminal head; spikelets ovoid, ellipsoid, or lanceoloid, terete (cylindrical) or slightly laterally flattened; glumes usually 5–9 per spikelet, 2-ranked or spirally imbricate, the basal 1 to few small and empty, the middle 1 to several glumes larger, bearing perfect flowers, the distal 1 to several staminate or empty. Flowers all bisexual (perfect) or sometimes distalmost staminate. Perianth of (0–)3–6 bristles. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2–3. Ovary superior; 2-carpellate; style jointed at base, persistent, base pyramidal or conical, spongy–thickened; stigmas 2 or essentially undivided.

Fruit: Achenes lenticular. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: