Dichanthium

Plants annual or perennial; cespitose, sometimes with extensive creeping stolons. Culms 15-200 cm. Leaves usually not aromatic; ligules membranous, sometimes ciliate; blades 2-4 mm wide. Inflorescences terminal, sometimes also axillary but the axillary inflorescences not numerous; peduncles with 1-many rames in digitate or subdigitate clusters; rames sometimes naked basally, axes terete to slightly flattened, without a translucent, longitudinal groove, bearing 1-many sessile-pedicellate spikelet pairs and a terminal triplet of 1 sessile and 2 pedicellate spikelets, basal pair(s) homomorphic and homogamous, staminate or sterile, unawned, persistent, distal spikelet pairs homomorphic but heterogamous, sessile spikelets bisexual and awned, pedicellate spikelets staminate or sterile and unawned; disarticulation in the rames, beneath the bisexual sessile spikelets. Sessile spikelets often imbricate, dorsally compressed, with blunt calluses; lower glumes chartaceous to cartilaginous, broadly convex to slightly concave, sometimes pitted; lower florets reduced, sterile; upper florets sterile or staminate and unawned in the homogamous pairs, bisexual and awned in the heterogamous pairs; awns 1-3.5 cm, usually glabrous; anthers (2)3. Pedicels free of the rame axes, terete to somewhat flattened, slender, not grooved. Pedicellate spikelets sterile or staminate. x = 10. Name from the Greek dicha, in two, as in two separate things, and anthos, flower, a reference to the presence of homogamous and heterogamous spikelets.