Arborescent or shrubby bamboos. Rhizomes short necked, pachymorph. Culms straight, pendulous, or occasionally clambering; internodes terete, smooth, usually glabrous; wall usually thin; nodal ridge not prominent; sheath scar prominent. Branches many, subequal or occasionally with a dominant branch replacing main culm. Culm sheaths deciduous, thickly papery to leathery, usually rigid, apex truncate or concave; auricles usually conspicuous; oral setae usually developed, often fimbriate; ligule truncate, short, serrulate; blade reflexed, sometimes erect. Leaf sheaths pubescent; auricles usually conspicuous; blade lanceolate or ovate-elliptical, variable in size, transverse veins scarcely visible. Inflorescence fully bracteate, iterauctant, initially densely glomerate with many pseudospikelets, terminal to a leafy shoot, later spicate, lateral to leafless flowering branches, subtended by several large bracts. Spikelets 1-flowered, with a rachilla extension. Glumes 2 or 3, long mucronate or awned; lemma similar to glumes, convolute. Palea thin, 2-keeled. Lodicules 3. Stamens 6; filaments free. Ovary stalked; style long, hollow; stigmas 2 or 3, plumose. Caryopsis nutlike, terete, apex with persistent style base.

Several early names were based on fragmentary material collected in NE India and Myanmar. The Chinese specimens cannot be reliably identified until better gatherings have been made both in China and in neighboring countries.

About nine species: S and SE Asia; six species in China (Xizang, Yunnan).

(Authors: Li Dezhu (李德铢); Chris Stapleton)