Rhizomatous perennials, with very tall culms. Leaf-blades broad and flat; ligule a short scarious membrane. Panicles large, dense, profusely branched, silkily hairy, glabrous at the bases of the lowest branches. Spikelets few-flowered, the florets all fertile or the upper ± reduced; rhachilla glabrous; glumes 3-5-nerved; lemma 5-9-nerved, bifid with a short awn in the sinus, with 3 nerves ± percurrent or excurrent, the rest short, covered all over the back below the middle with long soft hairs; palea 2-keeled, densely ciliate on the keels; stamens 3.