Odyssea Stapf

Stiff spiny rhizomatous perennials, the glaucous shoots with numerous distichous pungent leaves; culms branched or not, leafy for all or most of their length. Leaf-blades short and tough, many-ribbed, inrolled from a flat base, smooth or hairy; ligule a fringe of hairs; leaf-sheaths imbricate. Inflorescence dense and spike-like, narrowly elliptic to almost globose, composed of short crowded subsecund racemes. Spikelets several-flowered, elliptic to narrowly elliptic, imbricate, shortly pedicelled, disarticulating between the florets; glumes 1-nerved, persistent, shorter than the lemmas, subequal to unequal, rounded or subkeeled, scarious, obtuse or acute; lemmas 3-nerved, rounded on the back, scarious or membranous with scarious margins, silky villous along the lateral nerves and lower part of the central nerve, the hairs spreading, minutely 2-toothed and mucronate; palea scabrid on the keels and appressed sericeous on the inturned margins; callus bearded.