Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials or annuals of low to moderate stature.

Stems: Cespitose or rhizomatous, often stoloniferous, culms prostrate to erect.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades flat or folded. Apex abruptly rounded or pointed. Margins entire. Sheaths compressed, rounded or keeled, glabrous; ligule short, membranous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence of several to numerous digitate or paniculate, slender racemes, peduncles 1 to several from upper nodes; spikelets borne in 2 rows along the lower sides of a slender trigonous or flattened rachis, appressed to the rachis, imbricate, second glume and back of fertile lemma placed away from rachis, pedicels short; first glume absent, second glume and sterile lemma subequal, 2–5–nerved, slightly or considerably longer than fertile floret and concealing it; fertile lemma dorsally compressed, stiff, cartilaginous, usually faintly striate, glabrous, or with a few short spicules at its tip, margins slightly inturned over the equally long palea of similar form and texture. Stamens usually 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis flattened; elliptic.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: