Densely tufted perennials or annuals, usually without a rootstock. Leaf blades linear, usually in a basal tuft, but in annual species borne mainly on the culms. Panicle effuse, contracted or spike-like. Spikelets 1-flowered with long scarious glumes; lemma cylindrical or laterally compressed, indurated, glabrous or scabrid, rarely sparsely hairy, the margins convolute or involute, produced into a 3-branched awn (rarely the lateral branches obsolete); awn with or without a column, articulated or not, the branches glabrous or scabrid, never plumose; callus well-developed, obtuse, bifid or acuminate; palea usually less than half as long as the lemma.