Annuals or perennials. Panicles contracted, spike-like. Spikelets 3-flowered, the lowest florets reduced to sterile (rarely male) lemmas, the uppermost bisexual; rhachilla disarticulating above the glumes, not, or scarcely, produced; glumes membranous with hyaline margins, the upper as long as the spikelet; the lower about half as long; sterile lemmas narrowly oblong, brown, hairy, bilobed, the lower with a short straight awn from above the middle of the back, the upper with a geniculate awn from below the middle; fertile lemma rotund, shorter than the sterile lemmas, cartilaginous; palea as long as the lemma, 1-nerved; stamens 2; stigmas 2, pubescent.

A genus of about 20 species in temperate Europe and Asia, in the highlands of tropical Africa and Asia and in South Africa; introduced to America; 1 species occurs in Pakistan.

All the species are sweetly scented with coumarin.

Lower Taxon

• Anthoxanthum odoratum Linn.