Plants perennial; usually cespitose, occasionally stoloniferous. Culms 6-65 cm, erect. Leaves mostly basal; sheaths smooth, glabrous, striate, margins hyaline, collars with tufts of 1-3 mm hairs; blades usually folded, pilose basally, margins white, cartilaginous, apices acute but not sharp. Inflorescences terminal, simple panicles (racemes in depauperate specimens), exserted well above the leaves. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 3-20 florets, distal florets staminate or sterile; disarticulation above the glumes and between the florets. Glumes thin, membranous, 1-veined, acute to acuminate; calluses with hairs; lemmas rounded on the back, 3-veined, veins conspicuously pilose, at least basally, apices toothed or obtusely 2-lobed, midveins often extended into awns, awns to 4 mm, lateral veins sometimes extended as small mucros; paleas shorter than the lemmas, keels ciliate, intercostal regions pilose basally; lodicules 2, adnate to the bases of the paleas; anthers 1 or 3. Caryopses glossy, translucent; embryos more than 1/2 as long as the caryopses. x = 8. Name from the Greek erion, wool, and neuron, nerve, a reference to the hairy veins of the lemmas.
Erioneuron is an American genus of three species. Its seedlings appear to have a shaggy, white-villous indumentum, but this is composed of a myriad of small, water-soluble crystals.
Stoloniferous plants are unusual in the region covered by the Flora, but they are quite common in populations of Erioneuron nealley and E. avenaceumfrom central Mexico.
SELECTED REFERENCESSánchez, E. 1979. Anatomía foliar de las especies y variedades argentinas de los géneros Tridens Roem. et Schult. y Erioneuron Nash (Gramineae-Eragrostoideae-Eragrosteae). Darwiniana 22:159-175; Valdés-Reyna, J. and S.L. Hatch. 1997. A revision of Erioneuron and Dasyochloa (Poaceae: Eragrostideae). Sida 17:645-666.