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Annuals. Culms trailing. Leaf blades lanceolate; ligule membranous. Inflorescence composed of several slender, loosely spiculate racemes spaced along a central axis, spikelets paired but the sessile spikelet often reduced. Spikelets laterally compressed, florets 2; glumes equaling the spikelet or slightly shorter, lower glume acute to awned, upper glume gibbous, armed at maturity with coarse, tubercle-based hooklike bristles, apex acute or rarely awned; lower lemma equaling the spikelet, papery to subcoriaceous but membranous on the margins and with a median hyaline patch at the base; upper lemma laterally compressed, obliquely ellipsoid, cartilaginous to coriaceous, margins flat or inrolled.
Spikelets solitary, sometimes an abortive spikelet below it, pedicellate, rather distant, in two rows on one side of a slender raceme; first glume a little shorter than the spikelet, acute or mucronate, 3-to 5-nerved; second glume a little longer than the first, acuminate, saccate, 5-nerved, at maturity covered with stiff hooked bristles; sterile lemma about as long as the second glume, somewhat indurate, broad, obtuse, with thin margins, glabrous; fruit narrow, subacuminate, smooth and shining, the margins rather broad, not inrolled.
Glumes 3/4 to as long as spikelet, the inferior acute to awned, the superior gibbous, eventually armed with tubercle-based hooks and sometimes with wings, rarely awned.
Inflorescence of slender racemes along a central axis, the spikelets in distant pairs but the sessile of each pair often much reduced.
Superior lemma laterally compressed, cartilaginous to coriaceous with flat or involute margins.
Spikelets laterally compressed.
