POACEAE  

Robust annuals or perennials, sparingly branched. Leaves: blades lanceolate-linear, broad; ligule a fringe of hairs. Inflorescence axillary, a single subcylindric dorsiventral raceme with paired spikelets; internodes squatly clavate, shorter than spikelets. Sessile spikelet: callus truncate, with large central knob; lower glume oblong-ovate, crustaceous, smooth, pallid, narrowly winged on keels above; lower floret male, with palea; embryo 4/5 as long as caryopsis. Pedicelled spikelet well-developed; pedicel free, stout.

Caespitose perennials, mostly rambling; culms mostly with barbate nodes. Leaf blade erect and straight, linear, flat, scabrid on margins, finely pointed at apex; sheath tight or eventually slipping from culm,

Laxly caespitose annuals with ascending culms. Leaf blade flat, sparsely pilose. Inflorescence of 1 (or 2(3) digitately arranged) raceme(s) with broad, colourful, foliaceous rachis, bearing paired spikelets. Spikelets elliptic-oblong, glabrous; upper glume and lower lemma as long as spikelet, 3-nerved, the laterals thickened and bearing a tuft of hair near base, bilobed with an awn from the sinus; lower glume minute; upper lemma cartilaginous, acute, with flat, thin margins enfolding and concealing palea.

Annuals or perennials. Leaf blade linear; ligule a short ciliolate membrane. Inflorescence a solitary raceme, exserted from or enclosed by a narrow spatheole and gathered into a scanty or copious false panicle; raceme loose, with few spikelets (sometimes only 1), without homogamous spikelet pairs; internodes and pedicels long and slender. Sessile spikelet slightly dorsally compressed to subterete; callus usually pungent, applied obliquely to apex of internode with its tip free. Glumes: inferior one grooved on back or not; superior one usually awned. Lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma bilobed, passing between lobes into a glabrous to pubescent awn. Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid to subcylindrical. Pedicelled spikelet as long as sessile one, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, usually glabrous, with narrowly oblong to linear callus, sometimes spikelet much reduced or quite absent and its pedicel likewise much reduced

Straggling annuals, decumbent at base and rooting at lower nodes; culms weak. Leaf blades broadly linear to narrowly lanceolate; ligule membranous. Inflorescence composed of racemes borne along a central axis; rachis triquetrous, bearing solitary pedicellate spikelets. Spikelets narrowly lanceolate, dorsally compressed; lower glume adaxial, ovate,