Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Robust perennials with stolons.

Stems: Culms (stems) nodose, erect, hollow, obscurely trigonous or terete (cylindrical), leafy throughout their length, often bearing extra–vaginal shoots at lower nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. 3-ranked. blades linear, flat, dorsiventrally compressed. Margins strongly serrulate–scabrous. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths tubular; ligule absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences paniculate, consisting of several terminal and lateral, compound, corymbiform partial panicles, branches 1–3 in the axil of a leaf-like bract with numerous elongated rays; spikelets numerous, terete (cylindrical), clustered in small heads, rachilla flexuous, ovoid; glumes 6–8, irregularly spirally disposed, the lower 4–6 empty and smaller than upper 2, which both bear a perfect flower or the lower one functionally staminate. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or staminate. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2. Ovary superior, (2)3-carpellate; stigmas (2)3 or sometimes 4–6 resulting from further division of style branches.

Fruit: Achenes ovoid–globose; subterete; exocarp spongy; endocarp thick and hard. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: