Perennial, caespitose or rhizomatous, branches intravaginal or extravaginal. Culms simple or bambusiform, sometimes branching at nodes. Sheaths often wider than leaves, usually shorter than internodes, margins often decurrent at apex, often terminating in a marginal tuft of hairs. Ligule nerved or nerveless, membranous, hairy or glabrous. Lamina flat or curved, scabrous, pubescent or glabrous, soft or rigid. Inflorescence a narrow or open, much-branched panicle, often subtended by hairs or a hairy bract. Spikelets 1-flowered, disarticulation oblique above persistent glumes. Glumes 2, equal or unequal, the upper enclosing the floret, lower longer, 1—3—5- nerved, acute, acuminate, mucronate, awned, or erose. Lemma cylindrical and fusiform, pubescent, hairy or tubercular-scabrous or both, 3-5-nerved, margins convolute, terminating in a pronounced corona or a reduced rim with or without a coma of longer hairs; lobes conspicuous or small or absent; callus hairy, usually sharply pointed. Awn 0-1-2-geniculate, often very long; column twisted, arista straight or curved. Palea enclosed within lemma, = or < lemma, 0-2-nerved, internerve hairy or glabrous. Flower hermaphrodite. Lodicules 2 or 3, hyaline, nerved or nerveless, glabrous. Stamens 3, penicillate or naked at apex and/or caudate at base; in cleistogamous flowers reduced to 1 small fertile anther and 2 sterile small anthers. Gynoecium with 2 plumose stigmata. Caryopsis conforming to shape of lemma; hilum linear, ± = caryopsis, embryo to about 1/3 of caryopsis. Flowering chasmogamous or cleistogamous in aerial inflorescences.