Herbs, dioecious or less often monoecious or hermaphrodite, perennial, glabrous, caespitose or rhizomatous. Culms terete or slightly compressed, simple or branched, smooth or minutely rugose. Sheaths absent or few or many, persistent or caducous, appressed or lax. Inflorescences of many or few flowers in clusters on the culm or on inflorescence branches. Flowers not appearing to be in spikelets, males and females similar in dioecious species, sessile or shortly pedicellate, with 2 unequal floral bracts shorter than the tepals. Tepals 6, often rigid. Male flowers with 3 stamens, anthers exserted; pistillode mostly present. Female flowers with 3-locular ovary; styles or style-branches 3, very shortly connate at the base or arising close together on the ovary summit; staminodes mostly present. Fruit a capsule. Seeds ellipsoidal or globose, with large or small, raised, multicellular, round, ovoid or lobed colliculae arranged in lines parallel or rarely transverse to the long axis, or in an irregular pattern; sometimes also with a rectangular pattern of narrow patent plates (often with lacerate edges) or irregular raised lines over the colliculae. Culm anatomy: epidermal cells with sinuous radial walls and often globular silica bodies; chlorenchyma of 1–2 (–4) layers of elongated peg-cells, pillar cells absent; substomatal cavities often lined with thick-walled ‘protective cells’; central cavity (pith cavity) circular.
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