Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Large to small perennials, +/- with woody rhizomes, or sometimes small annuals.

Stems: Culms nodose and leafy, basal leaves reduced to bladeless sheaths in most species.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Blades cauline, elongated or short, linear, 3-costate or 5-costate. Sheaths often winged, apex of ventral side projecting beyond the sheath orifice forming a contra–ligule. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, paniculate, occasionally spicate or glomerate inflorescences; spikelets unisexual (and the plants monoecious) or bisexual and staminate, rarely all bisexual; pistillate spikelets with several empty, 2-ranked glumes, the terminal one bearing a pistillate flower composed of a naked pistil on a cup–shaped or disk–shaped hypogynium, the pistil 3-carpellate; staminate spikelets with few to numerous 2-ranked glumes, each bearing a flower, stamens 1–3; bisexual spikelets with a terminal pistillate flower and 1 to several lateral staminate flowers, each subtended by a glume. Flowers unisexual. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 1-3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Fruit usually a bony; globose achene. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: