Small perennials with rhizomes. Culms becoming fibrous at the base. Leaf-blades flat or folded, blunt at the tip. Inflorescence a spiciform or spreading panicle. Spikelets 1-flowered, rarely the rhachilla prolonged and bearing a rudimentary second floret, slightly laterally compressed, awnless; glumes persistent, unequal or subequal, almost as long as the spikelet (always more than half as long), firmly membranous with hyaline margins and tip, lightly keeled near the base, rounded above, the nerves falling short of the obtuse or subacute tip; lemma elliptic-oblong, thinly membranous, 3-5-nerved (the intermediate nerves obscure), keeled below, hairy on the nerves and sometimes also between them, the nerves not reaching the obtuse, broadly scarious tip; callus glabrous or hairy; palea as long as the lemma; lodicules large, bilobed; the lobes irregularly toothed.