Perennial. Leaf-blades linear, narrowed to a slender, often petiole-like base; ligule membranous. Inflorescence a solitary raceme tightly embraced by a spatheole, these numerous and crowded into a false panicle; raceme comprising 1 sessile and 2 pedicelled spikelets; pedicels flat and broad, forming, together with its lower glume, a sort of triangular box around the sessile spikelet. Sessile spikelet 2-flowered. falling entire, laterally compressed; callus bulbous, obtuse; lower glume coriaceous, convex across the back, 2-keeled and narrowly winged towards the tip, bidentate; upper glume boat-shaped, awnless; lower floret male with hyaline lemma and well-developed palea; upper floret bisexual, the lemma bibbed with a glabrous awn from the sinus or entire and awnless. Pedicelled spikelets awnless, unequal, the one male or bisexual, the other much smaller and barren.