These are tall leafy slender perennial grasses, with branching stems erect or geniculately ascending from a creeping or decumbent base. The inflorescence is a leafy panicle of many small spikes enclosed in spathiform bracts. Spikes are of one linear joint gibbously bulbous at the base, and jointed on the peduncle at the base of the spathe by a minute curved pedicel. Spikelets are three, a sessile, 2-flowered bisexual one in front, and two pedicelled ones behind, one of which is imperfect and reduced to a glume and the other perfect male or rarely bisexual. The two pedicels are flat, prolonged from one side of the rounded rachis, oblong linear, truncate with a few long hairs along the margin. Sessile spikelets have four glumes. The first glume is chartaceous, linear oblong, many-nerved, shortly bifid at the apex, longer than the other glumes. The second glume is thinner, dorsally gibbous, keeled, 5- to 9-nerved, beaked and minutely bifid. The third glume is hyaline, oblong, acute, 3-nerved, paleate and male. The fourth glume is hyaline, deeply bifid, awned in the sinus, bisexual with a minute palea. The pedicelled spikelet has also four glumes. The first and the second glumes are nearly equal, rather chartaceous. linear-oblong, acute or acuminate, many-nerved. The third glume is hyaline, oblong-lanceolate, 3-nerved, paleate and male. The fourth glume is hyaline, bifid, paleate, 1-nerved, female or bisexual. Lodicules are two. Stamens are three. Grain is oblong. =Apluda varia, _Hack._= This is a tall leafy perennial grass with wiry roots. Stems are densely tufted, branched, geniculately ascending, erect or the branches scandent, solid, smooth and polished, 1 to 7 feet. The _leaf-sheath_ is glabrous or slightly hairy, the upper ones being shorter and dilated into spathes with subulate tips. The _ligule_ is a short stiff slightly lacerate membrane. The _leaf-blade_ is linear-lanceolate, finely acuminate, base narrowed into a petiole, scaberulous on both the surfaces. The _inflorescence_ consists of simple spikes, each in a spathiform bract, and forming clusters terminating the stem and the branches. The _spikes_ have their bases rounded and swollen and each spike consists of a sessile bisexual spikelet and two flat linear, truncate, parallel pedicels, one terminated by a spikelet, and the other by a solitary minute glume. Spathes are 1/8 to 1/3 inch long, sessile or pedicellate, green, cymbiform, with subulate tips. [Illustration: Fig. 142.--Apluda varia. A. A cluster of spikes containing five spikes with their spathes; B and C. spikes.]