Eleusine

Annual or perennial, tufted, stoloniferous. Leaf blade linear, expanded or folded, strongly keeled, blunt at apex; sheaths keeled and margins free; ligule a fringed membrane, rarely an unfringed membrane. Inflorescence of 2-many spikes, digitate or subdigitate, sometimes a compact cluster; spikelets solitary, sessile or subsessile, arranged in 2 rows on one side of flattened rachis. Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes and between florets or not disarticulating; glumes very unequal, shorter than spikelet, keeled, scabrid on keels, awnless; lower glume 1-nerved; upper glume 3-7-nerved, herbaceous with membranous margins, narrowly winged on keel. Florets 2-15, bisexual or uppermost floret reduced; lemmas similar, membranous, glabrous, strongly keeled, keel sometimes thickened, 3-nerved, sometimes with 1-3 closely spaced additional nerves, lateral nerves often shorter than lemma, awnless to mucronate; palea slightly shorter lemma, notched at apex, 2-keeled with keels winged. Lodicules 2, minute, cuneate, glabrous. Stamens 3. Ovary glabrous; styles slender from a broadened base, distinct, plumose above. Caryopsis ellipsoid to subglobose, surface ornamented, enclosed in a free pericarp. x= 9 (polyploidy).