Oxytenanthera Munro

Bamboo with woody culms. Leaf-blades finally disarticulating from the sheath. Inflorescence of dense globose spikelet-clusters at the tips of leafy branchlets, each cluster arising in the axil of a short-bladed papery sheath, the individual spikelets subtended by several short papery bracts, these often with secondary spikelets in their axils. Spikelets 1–4-flowered, the upper florets hermaphrodite, the lower barren, terete or slightly laterally compressed, falling entire at maturity, the rhachilla very short and not prolonged; glumes rounded on the back, papyraceous to coriaceous, 17–30-nerved with cross-nerves; lemmas exceeding the glumes, progressively increasing in length upwards, rounded on the back, convolute, 26–32-nerved with cross-nerves, the tip pungent; palea 16–19-nerved, the uppermost keelless and convolute, the lower (if present) 2-keeled and concave on the back; lodicules usually absent; stamens 6, anthers mucronate, filaments united; ovary glabrous, the style hollow and bearing 3 stigmas. Grain with fused pericarp.