These are tufted perennial grasses with rigid equitant leaves at the base. The inflorescence consists of a solitary, glabrous, and compressed spike, with a somewhat fragile rachis; the joints are compressed, hollow and clavate. The spikelets are solitary, usually 2-flowered (rarely 1-flowered), secund, closely imbricating, sessile with a short, pedicelled, reduced upper spikelet, and deciduous with the joint. There are four glumes. The first glume is oblong or ovate, flat, smooth, coriaceous, pectinately margined with upcurved spines. The second glume is oblong-lanceolate, acute and 3-nerved. The third glume is hyaline, obtuse, paleate and male. The fourth glume is smaller, hyaline, oblong, obtuse, 1-nerved, paleate, bisexual or female. Lodicules are truncate and slightly oblique. Stamens are three with long anthers. Styles are two with feathery stigmas. The grain is oval, plano-convex. =Eremochloa muricata, _Hack._= This is a perennial tufted grass with a woody creeping root-stock. Stems are erect or ascending, slender, strongly compressed, lower parts completely covered by rigid equitant leaves, 6 to 18 inches long or more. The _leaf-sheath_ is broad, flat, much compressed, glabrous and keeled. The _ligule_ is a short membrane. _Nodes_ are glabrous. The _leaf-blade_ is linear, glabrous on both sides, 2 to 6 inches long and 3/16 to 1/4 inch broad, with a rounded tip and two unequal lobes. The _spike_ is solitary, up to 6 inches (or more) in length, joints of the rachis 1/3 to 1/2 the length of the spikelets. _Spikelets_ are solitary, sessile, compressed, secund. The _sessile spikelets_ are 3/16 to 1/6 inch, and consist of four spikelets. The _first glume_ is oblong-lanceolate, dorsally slightly convex, smooth, coriaceous, 7- to 9-nerved, and with pectinate margins consisting of long, spreading, upcurved spines and at the top with subquadrate wings on each side reaching beyond the acute tip. The _second glume_ is chartaceous, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, usually 5-nerved (and occasionally 3-nerved), the mid-nerve keeled with a narrow wing from below the middle to the base and with hyaline margins. The _third glume_ is oblong-obovate, hyaline, thin, paleate with three yellow _anthers_ and two oblong-cuneate _lodicules_; _palea_ is narrow, oblong, obtuse. The _fourth glume_ is thin, hyaline, oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, paleate, and bisexual; _palea_ lanceolate, narrow, two-toothed at the apex, with deep purple _anthers_ and _stigmas_ of the same colour. The _lodicules_ are obliquely truncate. _Ovary_ has a reddish spot between the style branches and just at the apex in the fresh state in the bud and in the open flower. [Illustration: Fig. 138.--Eremochloa muricata. A. Sessile spikelet; B. sessile and a pedicelled spikelet; 1, 2, 3 and 4. the first, second, third and the fourth glume of the sessile spikelet; 3a and 4a. palea of the third and fourth glumes of the sessile spikelet; 5. ovary, anthers and lodicules.]