Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small to medium-sized annuals or perennials.

Stems: culms tufted, slender to capillary, leafy only at base.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves basal, alternate/spiraling. Blades filiform or narrowly linear, rarely reduced to bladeless sheaths. Margins entire often inrolled. Veins parallel. Sheathing; sheaths usually bearded in the throat with long white hairs, these ± deciduous. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences anthelate, capitate or reduced to a single terminal spikelet, subtended by leaf-like involucral bracts; spikelets ovoid to ellipsoid; glumes 7–25, herbaceous to membranous, all alike, ovate, spirally imbricate, keeled, each bearing a perfect flower. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 1–3, but usually 2. Ovary superior; styles articulate at base, deciduous, base bulbous, persistent; stigmas (2)3.

Fruit: Achenes trigonous. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: