Chaetochloa Scribner, nom. rej.

Annuals or perennials. Culms usually tufted, slender to robust or canelike. Leaf blades linear to lanceolate, sometimes plicate or narrowed to a false petiole; ligule ciliate from a membranous base. Inflorescence a panicle, dense and spikelike or open with the spikelets contracted around the primary branches; spikelets (or some of them) subtended by one to several bristles which persist on the branches after the spikelets fall. Spikelets elliptic, plano-convex, sometimes gibbous, awnless, florets 2; glumes and lower lemma membranous to herbaceous; lower glume ovate from a clasping base, usually less than 1/2 spikelet length, 3–5-veined; upper glume half as long to equaling spikelet, several-veined; lower floret staminate or neuter, sometimes sulcate, its palea present, reduced or absent; upper lemma crustaceous, strongly convex, rugose, punctate or smooth, margins inrolled. x = 9.

The bristles in the inflorescence represent modified branchlets. The genus includes pasture grasses, a cereal crop, and a few noxious weeds.

About 130 species: tropics and subtropics, extending to warm-temperate regions of the world; 14 species (three endemic, one introduced) in China.

(Authors: Chen Shouliang (陈守良); Sylvia M. Phillips)