Rhizomatous perennials. Culms often becoming fibrous at the base. Leaf-blades flat or folded, blunt at the tip. Inflorescence a spreading panicle. Spikelets 2-4(-5)-flowered, slightly laterally compressed, awnless; glumes persistent, unequal or subequal, almost as long as the lowest lemma (or the lower glume at least half as long), firmly membranous with hyaline margins and tip, lightly keeled near the base, rounded above, the nerves falling short of the obtuse, sometimes toothed tip; lemmas elliptic-oblong, thinly membranous, 3-5-nerved, keeled below, hairy on the nerves. the latter not reaching the obtuse, broadly scarious tip; callus hairy; palea as long as the lemma or a little longer; lodicules large, irregularly toothed.

A genus of 4 species in Turkey, the Caucasus mountains, Siberia and the Himalayas; 1 species occurs in Kashmir.

The genus is distinct in our area by the large size of its spikelets, but the characters used to circumscribe the genus as a whole are, individually, rather obscure but collectively quite significant. The plants are rhizomatous; the glumes are at least half the length of the lowest lemma and the lodicules are large; the margins of the sheaths of the cauline leaves are united for a third to two-thirds their length; the caryopsis is free from the palea and has a shortly rostrate tip and an oblong hilum c. 0.3 times its length.

Lower Taxon

• Hyalopoa nutans (Stapf) Alexeev

Related Synonym(s):

• Catabrosa nutans Stapf = Hyalopoa nutans (Stapf) Alexeev
• Colpodium nutans (Stapf) Bor = Hyalopoa nutans (Stapf) Alexeev