Description: Decumbent or ascending perennials with many-noded, branched culms.
Leaves with ligule short, membranous; blade folded in bud.
Inflorescence a spike-like, spatheate raceme; rachis tough or tardily disarticulating; joints and pedicels fused into roughly semi-cylindric internodes. Spikelets paired, similar in sex and shape, each pair made up of a sessile spikelet and the pedicellate companion of the sessile spikelet of the node below. Sessile spikelets sunk in concave hollows on the inner face of the rachis, with 2 florets, the lower sterile and reduced to a lemma, the upper bisexual, awnless. Lower glume closing the cavity of the adjacent joint. Upper glume membranous, adhering to the inner face of the cavity. Lemmas 2, the lower 2-nerved, sterile; upper usually nerveless, subtending the fertile flower. Palea of the upper floret hyaline, small, nerveless. Lodicules 2, cuneate. Stamens 3.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 12 species, Old World tropical regions. Australia: 1 species (native).
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs & C. A. Wall
Taxon concept:
| One species in NSW: Hemarthria uncinata |
|
