Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Cespitose perennials or occasionally annuals, usually forming a somewhat dense turf, ± rhizomatous.

Stems: Culms erect, glabrous, smooth.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades linear to linear–lanceolate, flat. Surfaces glabrous to sparsely hirsute. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheaths glabrous to somewhat pilose; ligule membranous, lower surface glabrous, minutely ciliate along margins. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence a dense, spike-like, terminal panicle. Spikelets 3–flowered, laterally compressed, the 2 lowest florets reduced to sterile (rarely staminate) lemmas, the uppermost bisexual (perfect), rachilla disarticulating above the glumes, not or scarcely produced beyond the florets; glumes membranous with hyaline margins, unequal, second glume as long as the spikelet, 3–nerved, first glume about ½ as long, 1–nerved; sterile lemmas brown, narrowly oblong, pubescent, apex bifid, lower ones with a short straight awn from above the middle of the back, upper ones with a geniculate awn from below the middle, fertile lemma suborbicular, shorter than sterile lemmas, awnless, cartilaginous; palea as long as lemma, 1–nerved. Stamens 2. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis linear.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: