Description: Delicate tufted or decumbent perennials with slender much-branched culms.
Ligule a fringed membrane; blade linear or linear-lanceolate, lower blades deciduous.
Inflorescence a single raceme disarticulating at joints. Spikelets paired in pedicelled/sessile combinations; the pedicelled falling from its pedicel, the sessile falling with the internode and pedicel; the pedicelled slightly smaller but otherwise similar, compressed, 2-flowered, with 1 fertile floret. Glumes dissimilar, more or less equal, long relative to adjacent lemmas, hairy or glabrous; lower cartilaginous, rounded on the back, truncate, 2–3-lobed, strongly convex on back, relatively smooth, 3–5-nerved; upper glume 1-nerved, strongly keeled, awned with a capillary awm from the mid-nerve between 2 teeth. Lower lemma male or sterile, 0–1-nerved, sometimes reduced or absent. Upper lemma thinly membranous to hyaline, usually lobed for the 30–50% of its length, awned, 1-nerved, glabrous; awn from a sinus, filiform, geniculate, much longer than body of lemma; palea nerveless. Callus blunt. Pedicelled spikelets similar in shape to the sessile spikelet, often lacking lower floret; upper floret bisexual or female.
Distribution and occurrence: A genus of 4 species, from India, SE Australia. Aust.: 2 sp., NSW, Qld, 1 species naturalised in NSW.
Text by (2008) Jacobs, S.W.L., Whalley, R.D.B. and Wheeler, D.J.B. Taxon concept: Grasses of New South Wales. 4th ed.
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