Perennials or rarely annuals, sometimes tall weeds or tussock grasses. Leaf-blades narrowly linear or setaceous, occasionally flat; ligule a short scarious membrane or a line of hairs. Inflorescence an open or contracted panicle, sometimes large and plumose. Spikelets bisexual or the uppermost reduced, rarely unisexual and dioecious, laterally compressed, 2-10-flowered; rhachilla disarticulating beneath each floret, often produced and crowned with a rudimentary floret, sometimes long-villous; glumes persistent, hyaline to scarious or subherbaceous; lemmas membranous to coriaceous, 1-many-nerved, ± hairy or occasionally long-villous, entire or 2-lobed, awnless or awned from the tip or sinus, the lobes also often aristate; awn geniculate with a twisted column, sometimes straight; palea hyaline, shorter than or nearly as long as the lemma; lodicules 2-3; stamens 2-3, often minute; stigmas 2. Grain with medium-sized embryo and linear hilum; starch grains com¬pound. Chromosomes small, basic number 6, 9 or 12.

Genera ± 35; cosmopolitan; 6 genera and 10 species in Pakistan.

Arundineae were originally conceived as a tribe of tall grasses with large plumose panicles. However, it is by no means a homogeneous tribe and, with the shift in emphasis from spikelet morphology to cryptic characters as tribal criteria, its distinction from Danthonieae is no longer tenable.

Lower Taxa

• Arundo Linn.
• Asthenatherum Nevski
• Danthonia DC.
• Duthiea Hack.
• Phragmites Adans.
• Schismus P. Beauv.

Related Synonym(s):

• Czemya Presl = Phragmites Adans.
• Oxyanthe Steud. = Phragmites Adans.
• Thrixgyne Keng = Duthiea Hack.
• Trichoon Roth = Phragmites Adans.