Plants annual or perennial; cespitose, sometimes rhizomatous. Culms 10-180 cm, glabrous or hispidulous; nodes 2-5, glabrous. Sheaths open, smooth or scabrous; auricles absent; ligules hyaline, glabrous, obtuse to acute; blades flat, smooth or scabrous over the veins. Inflorescences open panicles; branches drooping to ascending, smooth or scabrous. Spikelets dorsally compressed, with 1 floret; rachillas not prolonged beyond the fertile floret; disarticulation above the glumes. Glumes equal, equaling or exceeding the lemmas, membranous, smooth or scabrous; calluses blunt, glabrous; lemmas coriaceous, glabrous, lustrous, margins involute, obscurely 5-veined; paleas similar to the lemmas and partly enfolded by them; lodicules 2, free, glabrous, toothed or not toothed; anthers 3. Caryopses glabrous; hila 1/5 to nearly 1/2 the length of the caryopses. x = 4, 5, 7, 9. Name from an old Latin word for millet, an appellation which is associated with species in several different genera.
Spikelets 1-fld, articulated above the glumes; glumes equal, herbaceous, ovate or elliptic, rounded on the back, obtuse or acute, 3-veined; lemma about as long as the glumes, elliptic, awnless, veinless, obtuse, rounded on the back, smooth, at first thin, at maturity firm, white, and shining, its margins partly covering a palea of similar texture, the whole resembling a fr of Panicum; grasses with broad flat lvs, membranous ligule, and widely branched panicle. 3-4, n. temp.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
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