Home
Spikelets solitary, pedicelled, slightly compressed laterally, 1-4-flowered, awned; rhachilla disarticulating above the glumes and (if several-flowered) between the florets, always produced and terminated by a reduced awned lemma (often apparently only a bristle-like awn); florets 1 or 2(4), usually all hermaphrodite or (perhaps?) the uppermost male.
Lemmas exceeding the glumes, 3-sub-5-nerved (very rarely fully 5-nerved), firmly membranous, dorsally rounded, awned from the apex or sometimes from between 2 short acute apical lobes; awn straight, slender, terete.
Paleas c. as long as the body of the lemmas, 2-nerved, 2-keeled, membranous, rather narrow, with the keels close together, with the apex entire or nearly so.
Caryopsis oblong in outline, ventrally longitudinally grooved, free between the lemma and the palea, with the apex distinctly pilose.
Ovary oblong, with the apex distinctly pilose; styles short, distinct; stigmas plumose, laterally exserted.
Lodicules 2, oblanceolate-cuneate, with the apex usually 2-lobed.
Leaf-laminae usually inconspicuously and irregularly tessellate.
Glumes 2, persistent, subequal, 1-3-nerved, membranous.
Inflorescence a large, open panicle, erect or nodding.
Perennial forest grasses with usually flaccid leaves.
Ligule a membrane.
Stamens 3.
