Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials or annuals of grass-like or rush-like habit, ± with rhizomes or stolons.

Stems: culms scape-like or leafy, usually trigonous and solid.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Basal and/or cauline. Blades linear to lanceolate. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing at base, ligules often scarcely developed, but abaxial side of leaf sheaths sometimes projected beyond the sheath orifice to form a narrow appendage (contraligule). Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences various, usually corymbose, paniculate, racemose, spicate, or congested in head(s), subtended by usually leafy bracts, bearing 1 to numerous spikelets, flowers perfect or unisexual (and then plants monoecious or occasionally dioecious); spikelets with few to numerous glumes imbricate or 2-ranked on a simple axis (rachilla), all or some of the glumes bearing an axillary flower or cymules of flowers. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual with plants monoecious or rarely dioecious. Perianth absent or consisting of 3 or 6 (or more) bristles or somewhat scale-like segments. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens usually 1–3. Ovary superior, 2–3- carpellate, 1-celled; ovule solitary; style elongate or short, 2–3(–8)- lobed at apex; stigmas filiform.

Fruit: Fruit usually a hard 2- or 3-sided nutlet. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: