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Perennial, rarely annual. Culms often tall, robust. Leaf blades aromatic, filiform to broadly linear; ligule scarious. Inflorescence a dense spathate compound panicle, each ultimate spatheole subtending a pair of short racemes on a short peduncle; spatheoles boat-shaped; each raceme borne on a short, flattened raceme base, often deflexed at maturity, lower raceme with one basal pair of homogamous spikelets below the fertile pairs; rachis internodes and pedicels linear, white-ciliate on margins, sometimes pedicel of homogamous pair swollen and fused to adjacent internode. Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed; callus obtuse, shortly bearded, inserted into internode apex; lower glume papery, flat or concave, sometimes grooved or wrinkled, 2-keeled, keels lateral, often winged above middle, with or without intercarinal veins; upper glume boat-shaped, awnless; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma narrowly oblong, usually 2-lobed to near middle, lobes slender, ciliate, awned from sinus, occasionally subentire and awnless; awn geniculate, sometimes weakly, short, glabrous. Pedicelled spikelet male or sterile, narrowly lanceolate, awnless. x = 10, 20, 40, 60.
Racemes short, in pairs, axillary, enclosed by the spatheoles, arranged in a dense, decompound, globose to elongated and ± interrupted spatheate false panicle; peduncles 0.5–2.5 mm long, flattened, reflexed at maturity; internodes and pedicels filiform, long-ciliate on both margins, the lowermost sometimes swollen, barrel-shaped and fused together; lowermost pair of spikelets in lower racemes homogamous.
Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed, narrowly lanceolate to narrowly ovate; callus obtuse; inferior glume with a median groove, occasionally flat on the back, narrowly winged on the keels or sometimes with only scabrid flanges near the apex, awnless; inferior floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; superior floret fertile, the lemma deeply bilobed or entire, awned.
Spikelets in pairs at each node of the short, paired racemes, those of the lowest pair of one or both racemes alike, sterile, awnless, and similar to the pedicellate spikelets above; sessile fertile spikelets dorsally compressed; first glume flat or grooved, sharply 2-keeled; fertile lemma narrow, awned from between two short lobes, sometimes awnless.
Pedicelled spikelet male, ± the same length as the sessile spikelet, rounded on the back, awnless.
