Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large perennials.

Stems: Culms erect, glabrous, smooth, with numerous widely spaced nodes, arising from thick scaly rhizomes and forming large colonies.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Strongly distichous, distributed rather uniformly along culm except on old stems. Blades linear lanceolate, flat. Base sessile. Surfaces glabrous, smooth or rarely slightly scabrous. Veins parallel. Sheaths glabrous, smooth; ligule coriaceous–membranous, lower surface slightly pilose with dense, long cilia along margins. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a large, plumose, terminal panicle. Spikelets 3–5–flowered, laterally compressed, V–shaped, lowermost florets reduced to a lemma only, uppermost 1–2 florets often underdeveloped, rachilla jointed below each fertile floret; glumes equal or subequal, coriaceous membranous, lanceolate, acute, nearly as long as the entire spikelet, 3–5–nerved; lemmas coriaceous–membranous, apex nearly subulate from a broadly lanceolate base, with 3 primary nerves and 2–4 weak secondary ones, densely long–pubescent on lower portions of the back, minutely awned between 2 hyaline teeth; palea 2–nerved, keeled, shorter than lemma. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis elongate.

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