Hyperthelia Clayton

Tall annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades linear; ligule scarious, sometimes adnate to sheath-auricles. Inflorescence composed of paired racemes subtended by spatheoles and crowded into a large leafy false panicle; racemes short, deflexed or not, with a single homogamous pair at the base of the lower; raceme-bases unequal, terete, the tip produced into a scarious appendage; internodes and pedicels linear. Sessile spikelet terete; callus pungent, applied obliquely to the top of the internode; lower glume coriaceous, with a median longitudinal groove, otherwise rounded on back and sides, herbaceous or membranous at the tip; upper glume with or without an awn; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma hyaline, bidentate, passing between the teeth into a stout awn with hairy column. Caryopsis narrowly elliptic. Pedicelled spikelet ♂, narrowed at the base to an indistinct conical callus, muticous or aristulate.