Perennial or annual. Culms tufted. Leaf sheaths usually keeled; leaf blades linear; ligule membranous, sometimes with ciliate fringe. Inflorescence of solitary racemes, these terminal or axillary and loosely aggregated into a spathate panicle; peduncle included to long-exserted. Racemes linear, dense, spikelets imbricate, 1 to several pairs of homogamous spikelets at base of raceme below fertile pairs, fragile between fertile pairs; internodes and pedicels reduced to short oblique stumps obscured by hairs from backside of sessile spikelet callus. Homogamous spikelets herbaceous, flat, lanceolate-oblong. Sessile spikelet subterete; callus long, pungent, bearded; lower glume leathery, obtuse; upper glume awnless; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma stipitiform, entire, passing into a stout geniculate awn with hairy column. Pedicelled spikelet larger than sessile, resembling homogamous spikelets, awnless; callus slender, pedicel-like; true pedicel reduced to a stump.

Six species: throughout the tropics and subtropics; three species in China.

(Authors: Chen Shouliang (陈守良); Sylvia M. Phillips)