Arborescent or shrubby bamboos. Rhizomes short necked, pachymorph. Culms straight, pendulous, or occasionally clambering; internodes terete, smooth, usually glabrous; wall usually thin; nodal ridge not prominent; sheath scar prominent. Branches many, subequal or occasionally with a dominant branch replacing main culm. Culm sheaths deciduous, thickly papery to leathery, usually rigid, apex truncate or concave; auricles usually conspicuous; oral setae usually developed, often fimbriate; ligule truncate, short, serrulate; blade reflexed, sometimes erect. Leaf sheaths pubescent; auricles usually conspicuous; blade lanceolate or ovate-elliptical, variable in size, transverse veins scarcely visible. Inflorescence fully bracteate, iterauctant, initially densely glomerate with many pseudospikelets, terminal to a leafy shoot, later spicate, lateral to leafless flowering branches, subtended by several large bracts. Spikelets 1-flowered, with a rachilla extension. Glumes 2 or 3, long mucronate or awned; lemma similar to glumes, convolute. Palea thin, 2-keeled. Lodicules 3. Stamens 6; filaments free. Ovary stalked; style long, hollow; stigmas 2 or 3, plumose. Caryopsis nutlike, terete, apex with persistent style base.
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