Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades flat, narrow; ligule a membranous rim, ciliate along the top. Inflorescence stiff, cylindrical, spike-like, dense or moderately open, with the spikelets in pedunculate deciduous clusters of 2–3; clusters racemose, the spikelets sessile on a very short curvaceous rhachis. Spikelets narrowly ovate to orbicular, laterally compressed, the upper reduced; glumes well developed, thickly indurated, with narrow hyaline margins, ± gibbous, scaberulous to lanose, the upper drawn out into a stiff point; lemma broadly ovate, shorter than the glumes, membranous, 3-nerved, terminating in a short awn-point; stamens 3. Caryopsis ellipsoid, gibbous, laterally compressed.