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Annuals or perennials, mostly robust, with or without rhizomes. Leaf-blades linear, often broad; ligule membranous or scarious, rarely a line of hairs. Inflorescence a large terminal panicle, with tough persistent branches bearing short fragile (except in cultivated species) racemes; internodes and pedicels filiform. Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed; callus obtuse, rarely pungent; lower glume ± coriaceous, broadly convex across the back, becoming 2-keeled and narrowly winged near the tip; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma hyaline, bidentate, with a glabrous awn from the sinus, sometimes entire and muticous. Caryopsis mostly obovoid, dorsally compressed. Pedicelled spikelet ♂ or barren, mostly linear-lanceolate to subulate, usually much narrower than the sessile and awnless.
Spikelets in pairs, or at the ends of the branches in threes, numerous, dorsally compressed, forming a large, branching panicle that in wild-adapted plants disarticulates at maturity into joints bearing a single pair (or trio) of spikelets; one spikelet of each pair sessile and perfect, the other pedicellate and staminate or neuter; glumes indurate, about equal; lemmas hyaline, the palea ± reduced, both sorts of spikelets typically with a lower empty lemma and an upper floriferous one; upper lemma of the fertile spikelet usually with a geniculate and twisted, readily deciduous dorsal awn. 20, e. Afr., s. Asia, and Aust.
Spikelets in pairs, one sessile and fertile, the other pedicellate, usually staminate, the pairs at the nodes of the tardily disarticulating rachis of short, few-jointed, panicled racemes, the terminal sessile spikelet with 2 pedicellate spikelets; glumes of fertile spikelet indurate, the first rounded, somewhat keeled at the summit; fertile lemma awnless or with a short, usually geniculate, twisted awn; pedicellate spikelets herbaceous, lanceolate, the first glume several-nerved, 2-keeled in the upper half.
Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed; callus obtuse or pungent; inferior glume cartilaginous, convex on the back, rounded on the flanks but becoming 2-keeled near the apex, usually pilose; superior lemma awned or awnless.
Inflorescence a large panicle, its primary branches simple or subdivided, bearing short dense racemes with pilose internodes.
Pedicelled spikelet male or barren, or reduced to the inferior glume.
