Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annuals or perennials.

Stems: Culms herbaceous, nodes glabrous, internodes solid.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades flat. Surfaces glabrous but long-ciliate at the edges of the collar. Margins pectinate–ciliate. Veins parallel. Sheaths open, margins overlapping, usually glabrous; ligule a fringe of hairs, or membranous with a ciliate margin. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences stiff, dense, cylindrical, spike-like, the spikelets in subsessile or rarely long–pedunculate, deciduous, bur-like clusters, each bur consisting of 2–5 spikelets, these paired, sessile, the rachis short. spikelets lanceolate to ovate, awnless, those of a bur all alike or the upper one reduced; glumes dissimilar, first glume minute, hyaline, scalelike or absent, second glume as long as the spikelets, nerves raised into prominent ribs bearing a row of stout prickles, tissue thin between the ribs; lemma almost as long as glumes, ovate, membranous, 3–nerved. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis ellipsoid to oblong; slightly dorsally compressed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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