Plants perennial; often scrambling. Culms to 3 m, decumbent. Leaves not aromatic; sheaths open; ligules membranous; blades linear, often pseudopetiolate. Inflorescences false panicles, individual inflorescence units with solitary rames; rames to 1 cm, often enclosed by the subtending leaf sheath, with 1 sessile and 2 unequally pedicellate spikelets; disarticulation at the base of the sessile spikelets, sometimes also at the base of the pedicellate spikelets. Sessile spikelets laterally compressed, with a large, bulbous callus; lower glumes coriaceous, without keels or wings, smooth, bidentate; upper glumes unawned; upper lemmas awned or unawned. Pedicels flat, wide, adjacent to each other, appressed but not fused to the rame axes. Pedicellate spikelets usually unequal, unawned, 1 staminate or bisexual and as large as the sessile spikelet, the other sterile and usually smaller. x = 10. Name from the Latin apluda, chaff, a reference to the appearance of the inflorescence after the spikelets have fallen.