Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Robust perennials, ± rhizomatous.

Stems: Culms stiffly erect, solid, branched.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, primarily basal. Blades flat or folded, nonauriculate. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheaths keeled, open; ligule membranous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a branched panicle, composed of either 2 to few, basically digitately arranged spicate branches, or the inflorescence many-branched above and terminating in numerus leafy branchlets bearing 2 to several pedunculate flower clusters, rachis joints usually pubescent, sometimes with a shallow groove on 1 side. Spikelets in pairs of 1 sessile and 1 pedicellate, 2–flowered, dorsiventrally compressed, the pedicellate spikelet well–developed, reduced, or represented only by a pedicel, the sessile spikelet fertile, both spikelets disarticulating as a unit with a section of the rachis; glumes subequal, large, narrow, coriaceous, first glume flat or slightly concavo-convex, strongly 4–nerved, clasping second glume, the second glume sometimes slightly keeled; lemmas of sterile and fertile florets membranous, hyaline, sometimes greatly reduced, lemma of fertile floret narrow, entire or bifid and sometimes bearing a twisted awn from apex or from between the lobes; palea of fertile floret small or absent, hyaline; stamens 1–3. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis ellipsoid to ovoid; dorsally slightly flattened; ventrally slightly concave.

Ploidy:

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