Oryzidium

Perennial, stoloniferous, rooting from lower nodes, floating; culms soft, spongy and compressible. Leaf blade expanded, linear, leaf sheaths broad, papery; ligule a very short fringe of hairs. Inflorescence a panicle, somewhat contracted; spikelets solitary, pedicelled, pedicels coarsely scabrid. Spikelet lanceolate, dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes and pedicels; glumes very unequal in size, dissimilar in appearance, 3-7-nerved; lower glume usually reduced to an ovate, membranous scale, minutely awned; upper glume lanceolate, as long as spikelet, stiffly membranous, scabrid on nerves, produced at apex into an stiff awn; awn 3 or 4 times as long as body of glume, scabrid. Florets 2; lower floret male, separated from upper floret by a long rachilla internode; lemma lanceolate, membranous, 5-nerved, awned; palea shorter than lemma, subhyaline; upper floret bisexual; lemma similar to, to firmer in texture than glumes, acute, entire, glabrous, 7-nerved, mucronate, margins flat and exposed on palea, palea similar to lemma. Lodicules 2, cuneate. Stamens 3. Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; style distinct, plumose.