Perennial. Leaf-blades linear, narrowed to a slender, often petiole-like base; ligule membranous. Inflorescence a solitary raceme tightly embraced by a spatheole, these numerous and crowded into a false panicle; raceme comprising 1 sessile and 2 pedicelled spikelets; pedicels flat and broad, forming, together with its lower glume, a sort of triangular box around the sessile spikelet. Sessile spikelet 2-flowered. falling entire, laterally compressed; callus bulbous, obtuse; lower glume coriaceous, convex across the back, 2-keeled and narrowly winged towards the tip, bidentate; upper glume boat-shaped, awnless; lower floret male with hyaline lemma and well-developed palea; upper floret bisexual, the lemma bibbed with a glabrous awn from the sinus or entire and awnless. Pedicelled spikelets awnless, unequal, the one male or bisexual, the other much smaller and barren.

A monotypic genus in southern Asia and Australia.

Lower Taxon

• Apluda mutica Linn.

Related Synonym(s):

• Apluda aristata Linn. = Apluda mutica Linn.
• Apluda communis Nees = Apluda mutica Linn.
• Apluda geniculata Roxb. = Apluda mutica Linn.
• Apluda microstachya Nees = Apluda mutica Linn.
• Apluda mutica var. aristata (Linn.) Hack. ex Backer = Apluda mutica Linn.
• Apluda varia Hack. = Apluda mutica Linn.