Pentameris

Perennial, tufted or decumbent, up to 650 mm tall, sometimes cushion-like. Leaf blade long-linear, hard, rigid, wiry or flat and open, often strongly curved or curled, usually tightly rolled at an early stage; ligule a fringe of hairs. Inflorescence a large, open or somewhat contracted panicle with 5-20 spikelets; spikelets solitary, pedicelled. Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes +/- equal, much longer than spikelet, similar, membranous to chartaceous, 1-3-nerved, glabrous or hairy, awned or awnless. Florets 1 or 2, sometimes with rudiments of a third floret, bisexual; lemma similar in texture to firmer than glumes, membranous, oblong, 7-9(-11)-nerved, not keeled, hairy from between nerves, 2-lobed, lobes entire or shortly 2-toothed, each with a loosely twisted or straight bristle or awn from inner margin, central awn from between lobes, 4 or 5 times as long as lemma; awn flat, twisted, geniculate; callus short, blunt, hairy; palea +/- as long as lemma, 2-keeled, hairy between keels, 2-toothed at apex. Lodicules 2, glabrous or ciliolate. Stamens 3. Ovary obovoid, with a dense tomentum of branched hairs at apex; styles distinct, short, plumose. Fruit an achene with free pericarp, fusiform, subglobose to globose or cuneate.