Caespitose perennials. Leaf-blades linear, flat or folded, sometimes setaceous. Inflorescence a narrow panicle, erect or nodding. Spikelets 2-6-flowered, the florets similar, bisexual, or the uppermost ± reduced; rhachilla disarticulating below each floret, slender, hairy, produced as a short bristle or ending with a rudimentary lemma; glumes unequal, keeled, hyaline to herbaceous, the lower 1-3-nerved, the upper 3-5-nerved, acute; lemmas narrowly lanceolate in profile, enclosed by or more often exserted from the glumes, herbaceous with hyaline tips and margins, sometimes becoming indurated, 5-11-nerved, bind, geniculately awned from the upper part of the back; palea shorter than the lemma, 2-keeled; stamens 3; stigmas 2.