Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with short, erect, woody rhizomes, often forming large tussocks.

Stems: Culms usually stout, nodose.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Primarily basal, a few cauline, blades usually coriaceous. Blades linear. Margins involute, usually scabrous. Sheath usually brown to blackish brown; liguie well developed. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences paniculate, consisting of several to numerous partial panicles spikelets solitary or 2–4 together, rachilla continuous; glumes several, spirally imbricate, chartaceous, usually dark brown, the lower 3–8 (occasionally more) lanceolate, apex acute, 1-costate, empty, the distal 2–3 smaller than the other glumes, obtuse, the distal 2 bearing flowers, the lowest flower sterile or staminate, the upper one perfect, the flower bearing glumes thin at anthesis, becoming thick in fruit and tightly enclosing the achene. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or staminate. Perianth absent, rarely of bristles or small scales. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2–6; filaments often elongating after anthesis and persistent. Ovary superior, 2–3-carpellate; style 2–3-lobed, sometimes 4-lobed resulting from division of the branched bifid style, base not thickened; stigmas 2–4.

Fruit: Achenes ellipsoid or ovoid; trigonous or subterete; rarely obscurely 4–angled; the bony exocarp glossy and hard. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy:

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