Rambling perennials, or sometimes annuals. Leaf-blades linear to lanceolate, narrowed at the base and often with a short false petiole; ligule short, scarious. Inflorescence terminal, comprising up to 25 subdigitate racemes, these rarely solitary or with a short common axis; racemes fragile (very rarely tough), seldom conspicuously hairy, bearing paired similar spikelets; internodes and pedicels linear or rarely inflated. Spikelets dorsally comprssed, the callus obtuse; lower glume herbaceous to cartilaginous, the back flat with a median groove and the margins sharply inflexed, acute or notched at the tip; upper glume acute or with a short awn-point; lower floret male, reduced to a hyaline. scale, or suppressed, these variants often mixed in the same panicle; upper lemma hyaline, linear to cordate, often minute, bidentate to bifid, with a glabrous awn from the sinus; palea small or absent; stamens 3, rarely 2; caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid to lanceolate, dorsally flattened.