Berghausia Endlicher; Miquelia Arnott & Nees (1843), not Meisner (1838).

Annual or perennial. Culms stiffly erect and unbranched, or weak, geniculate and branching; nodes usually pubescent. Leaf blades linear to lanceolate; ligule short, membranous, lacerate or ciliate. Panicle usually contracted, narrow with appressed branches, infrequently branches widely spreading; spikelets commonly paired, sometimes solitary or in threes; pedicels unequal. Spikelets with 1 floret, narrowly lanceolate, dorsally compressed, base often with a tuft of short stiff hairs, these sometimes sparse or absent, disarticulating below spikelet; glumes as long as spikelet, subequal, lower slightly longer, thinly herbaceous, 3-veined, glabrous or hispid, acute to acuminate, awned or awnless; lemma about as long as upper glume, membranous, 1–3-veined, apex entire or 2-toothed, awned or rarely awnless; awn slender, straight, flexuous, or geniculate from base or with a brown twisted column; palea subequal to lemma, margins ciliate, auriculate at base. 2n = 20.

About 30 species: India and Nepal eastward through SE Asia to Polynesia, Hawaii, and Australia (Queensland), one species in the Seychelles; five species (two endemic) in China.

(Authors: Wu Zhenlan (吴珍兰); Sylvia M. Phillips)