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Culms erect or decumbent, solid. Leaf blades strikingly distichous. Panicle branches single or whorled, persistent on axis, branchlets often subtended by a linear bract. Female spikelet: lemma inflated, shell-or urn-shaped, closed except for a tiny pore through which the 3 stigmas and palea apex protrude, prominently 5–9-ribbed, greatly enlarging after fertilization, coloring white, pink or purple; palea free or adnate to margins of lemma. Male spikelet: lemma conduplicate with free margins, 5–9-veined.
Lemma with the margins connate (thus utricle-like) with an apical or lateral porus, inflated, prominently nerved and usually longitudinally ribbed, more or less densely covered with stiff short hooked hairs.
Inflorescence a loose panicle, usually terminal, containing male and female spike-lets, with the females in a group at the base and the male or males terminal on the branchlets.
Palea completely enclosed by the lemma, longer than the utricle and often appearing at the porus, very delicate, linear, 2-keeled, with the apex bidentate.
Ovary small, narrowly ovoid, gibbous; style simple; stigmas 3, rather long, filiform, plumose, exserted through the porus of the lemma.
Lemma of ♀ spikelet shell-or urn-shaped, closed except for a tiny pore through which the stigmas and tip of the palea protrude.
Caryopsis free from the lemma, oblong in outline, compressed; hilum linear, within a longitudinal groove; embryo very small.
Leaf-laminas large, asymmetric, with a typical slanting venation, tessellate, born on a twisted (180°) pseudopetiole.
Palea shorter than the lemma, membranous, distinctly 2-keeled, 2-nerved, narrowly oblong, with the apex bidentate.
Glumes 2, much smaller than the spikelet, subequal, membranous, ovate, 5-7-nerved, usually spreading.
Hermaphrodite spikelets subsessile, rather conspicuous, ovoid or conchiform, inflated.
Male spikelets usually much smaller and less conspicuous than the hermaphrodite.
Spikelets 1-flowered, monoecious, heteromorphous, unisexual.
Lemma similar to the glumes but with more nerves, cymbiform.
Glumes 2, subequal, much shorter than the spikelet.
Stamens 6; filaments rather short; anthers linear.
Perennial rhizomatous bamboo-like grasses.
Ligule scarious, often fringed.
Lodicules very small to nil.
