Plants annual or perennial; straggling. Culms to 100 cm, often decumbent. Leaves not aromatic; ligules membranous; blades narrowly-elliptic to lanceolate, often pseudopetiolate. Inflorescences terminal, subdigitate to racemose clusters of 1-few rames; rame internodes slender, without a translucent longitudinal groove; disarticulation in the rames beneath the sessile spikelets, and below the pedicellate spikelets. Spikelets in homogamous, homomorphic, sessile-pedicellate pairs, with 1 or 2 florets. Lower glumes herbaceous to cartilaginous, longitudinally grooved, margins inflexed, 4-6-veined, usually keeled; upper glumes 3-veined, mucronate or shortly awned; lower florets absent, or reduced and sterile; upper florets bisexual; upper lemmas usually awned; anthers (2)3. x = 10. Pedicels not fused to the rame axes. Name from the Greek micros, small, and stege, cover, possibly alluding to small glumes.
Microstegium is a genus of approximately 15 species, most of which are native to southeastern Asia; one is established in the Flora region.
SELECTED REFERENCESFairbrothers, D.E. and J.R. Gray. 1972. Microstegium vimineum (Trin.) A. Camus (Gramineae) in the United States. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 99:97-100; Hunt, D.M. and R.E. Zaremba. 1992. The northeastward spread of Microstegium vimineum (Poaceae) into New York and adjacent states. Rhodora 94:167-170; Mehrhoff, L.J. 2000. Perennial Microstegium vimineum (Poaceae): An apparent misidentification. J. Torrey Bot. Soc. 127:251-254.
