Citation: Kuntze, Rev. Gen. Pl. 2:762 (1891).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Blue-grasses.

Description:
Tufted perennials; leaf blades usually flat, ligule usually membranous.

Inflorescence of spike-like racemes arranged in a panicle or digitately; spikelets 2-flowered, in pairs, the sessile one fertile, the pedicellate one sterile or male, the terminal spikelets in three's, pedicels and articles of the rhachis silky-villous with a longitudinal translucent furrow visible when illuminated from behind or below, 1 or 2 of the lowest sessile spikelets sterile and awnless although resembling the fertile spikelets and persisting at the summit of the stem for some time after the upper spikelets have fallen; glumes of sessile spikelet obtuse, flat or concave, with 2 prominent marginal minutely ciliolate or scabrous keels and often with a depression or pit in the back, the second glume boat-shaped, about as long, acute, more or less hairy, 3-nerved, with a blunt protuberant keel or mid-nerve and enclosing the small hyaline first lemma and the short narrow second (fertile) lemma with a terminal awn rising from the toothless summit, the column loosely twisted; palea minute or absent.

Distribution:  About 20 species from warm parts of the world.

Biology: No text

Key to Species:

1. Nodes more or less pubescent; pedicellate spikelets sometimes male, with 2 glumes and with or without a sterile lemma; anthers yellow; racemes 6 to many
2. Racemes at the base of the panicle shorter than the long common rhachis	B. bladhii 1.
2. Racemes much longer than the common rhachis	B. ewartiana 2.
1. Nodes glabrous; pedicellate spikelets sterile, with usually only 1 glume; anthers purple; racemes usually 2-5	B. macra 3.

Author: Not yet available