Description: Tufted perennials with short rhizomes; culms erect or geniculate at the base, slender, smooth.
Leaves with ligule a short fringe of hairs; blade narrow, stiff, pointed, convolute.
Inflorescence a short, spike-like panicle.
Spikelets solitary on short pedicels, rachilla disarticulating above the glumes, 1 bisexual floret, lower spikelets sometimes sterile. Glumes subequal, firm, 3-nerved. Lemmas close around the palea, hairy on the 3 nerves, deeply divided into 3 lobes which taper into scabrid or ciliate awn-like bristles, lobes longer than the body of the lemma and with the thin margins often forming delicate lateral lobes. Palea subequal to the lemma, deeply 2-lobed, the lobes tapering into awn-like bristles.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 7 species, endemic Australia. Australia: all mainland States.
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs & S. M. Hastings
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Panicle oblong to narrow-cylindrical; lemmas 7–8 mm long including the lobes, which are ciliate to the apex of the bristles; leaf blades 8–15 cm long | Amphipogon caricinus |
| Panicle a dense head, oblong to ovoid; lemmas 9–10 mm long including the lobes, which are scabrous at their apices; leaf blades less than 8 mm long | Amphipogon strictus |
|
