Annuals or perennials, usually with low herbaceous culms. Leaf-blades linear to lanceolate or ovate; ligule a line of hairs. Inflorescence a panicle, a raceme, or several racemes scattered along a central axis. Spikelets all alike, small, awnless, 2-flowered with the florets similar or dissimilar, the lower male or bisexual, the upper female or bisexual (very rarely 1-flowered, or with a third, barren floret); rhachilla disarticulating above the glumes and usually between the florets, the glumes persistent or, more often, deciduous soon after the florets have fallen; glumes equal, from half to as long as the spikelet, membranous, 3-9-nerved, rarely nerveless or 1-nerved; lemma firmly membranous to chartaceous or coriaceous, nerveless or obscurely 5-7-nerved, the upper often smaller and firmer in texture than the lower; palea as long as the lemma or slightly shorter; lodicules 2; stamens 2.3; stigmas 2. Grain with large embryo and punctiform to linear hilum; starch grains simple. Chromosomes small, basic number 10.

Genera 5; tropics, principally in Asia; a single species in Pakistan.

Spikelet morphology recalls that of Paniceae, and Isachneae may perhaps be regarded as a precursor of that tribe.

Lower Taxon

• Isachne R. Br.