Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual; tufted, often with creeping rhizomes or stoloniferous; culm slender, often geniculate and ascending
• Leaf blade narrow, expanded, folded or rolled; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence a panicle, open or contracted; spikelets solitary, secund, shortly pedicelled
• Spikelet unconventional and hard to interpret, strongly laterally compressed; glumes 0 or reduced to a very obscure rim at tip of pedicel
• Floret 1; lemma coriaceous, not becoming indurated, boat-shaped, almost plano-convex in outline, keels rigidly ciliate, 3-5-nerved, shortly acuminate or awned; palea narrow, 3-nerved, subcartilaginous except on hyaline margins, grooved along outer nerves with keel rigidly ciliate, tightly clasped by inflexed margins of lemma
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, finely nerved
• Stamens (1-)6
• Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; styles distinct, plumose
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Leersia Sw.
  • Swartz: 21 (1788)
  • Stapf: 659 (1900)
  • Chippindall: 33 (1955)
  • Launert: 125 (1970)
  • Clayton: 24 (1970)
  • Launert: 26 (1971)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 73 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 196 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 526 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 18, throughout tropics and warm temperate regions
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread in moist habitats