Perennial, or sometimes annual. Culms often decumbent and much branched. Leaf blades linear to lanceolate, narrowed to ligule, sometimes pseudopetiolate; ligule membranous; sheath auricles often present. Inflorescence of paired racemes, or occasionally subdigitate, terminal and axillary, exserted or sometimes supported by a spatheole; racemes 1-sided, when paired often locked back to back and appearing as a single cylindrical raceme, spikelets of a pair similar or not; rachis internodes and pedicels stoutly linear to thickly clavate, U-shaped or triquetrous in cross section. Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed; callus truncate or obtuse, inserted into hollowed internode apex; lower glume papery to leathery, shallowly convex or almost flat, 2-keeled or rounded on flanks, sometimes winged, often rugose; upper glume boat-shaped, awnless or with straight awn from apex; lower floret male, well developed with palea; upper lemma usually deeply 2-lobed, awned from sinus, rarely awnless; awn geniculate, glabrous. Pedicelled spikelet as large as sessile or much smaller, upper lemma sometimes geniculately awned.

About 70 species: throughout the tropics but mainly in Asia, especially India; 12 species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Sun Bixing (孙必兴 Sun Bi-sin); Sylvia M. Phillips)