Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades linear; ligule very short, membranous. Inflorescence composed of solitary racemes embraced by sheathing spatheoles, these single or in little bunches on flexuous peduncles, and gathered into a leafy false panicle; raceme comprising 2 homogamous paires of spikelets forming a sort of involucre, and 1-4 sessile spikelets with their pedicelled attendants, the sessile spikelets separately deciduous; internodes linear. Homogamous spikelets all sessile, persistent. Sessile spikelet 2-flowered, falling entire, terete; callus obtuse to pung¬ent; lower glume coriaceous, rarely grooved, obtuse; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper floret bisexual, the lemma stipitiform and passing directly into a puberulous or pubescent awn, or hyaline and awnless; palea small or absent; caryopsis lanceolate, channelled on one side. Pedicelled spikelet male or barren, narrowly lanceolate, awnless, with a long slender callus as long as or longer than the true pedicel (this often reduced to a short stump).