Plants annual or perennial. Culms to 60 cm, erect. Sheaths open; auricles absent; ligules membranous; blades flat or involute. Inflorescences terminal panicles. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 2 bisexual florets; rachillas prolonged beyond the florets, pilose; disarticulation above the glumes and beneath the florets. Glumes subequal, exceeding the florets, lanceolate, membranous, acute; lower glumes 1-veined; upper glumes 3-veined at the base; calluses pilose; lemmas about 1/2 as long as the glumes, ovate-lanceolate, membranous, 1-veined, acute, awned from just above the base, awns geniculate, articulated near the middle, with a ring of minute, conical protuberances near the joints, proximal segments yellow-brown to dark brown, smooth, thicker than the distal segments, distal segments pale green to whitish, clavate; paleas shorter than the lemmas, membranous; lodicules 2, free, glabrous, toothed; anthers 3; ovaries glabrous. Caryopses usually adhering to the lemmas and/or paleas, longitudinally grooved. x = 7. Name from the Greek koryne, club, and phoreus, bearer, an allusion to the club-shaped awns.

Spikelets 2-fld, articulated above the glumes and between the lemmas, also readily detachable from the pedicel below the glumes; glumes subequal, membranous, acuminate, somewhat keeled, obscurely 1-3-veined; lemmas half as long as the glumes, thin or hyaline, hairy at base, rounded on the back, the midvein divergent into an awn just above the base, otherwise veinless; awn twice as long as the lemma, jointed in the middle, the basal half brown, straight, stout, the distal half pale, gradually thickened to the tip; panicle narrow; blade involute-filiform. 6, Europe, Medit.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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