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Flowering glume papery-membranaceous, dry and sometimes indurating with age, rounded or flattish on the back, 5–many-nerved, scarious at the entire blunt summit.

Panicle 1° long; the simple branches appressed, finally spreading below; leaves short and rather broad, very smooth; spikelets 7–13-flowered; flowering glume oblong, obtuse, or the scarious tip acutish, entire or obscurely 3-lobed, usually rather longer than the blunt palet.—Shallow water; common.

Involucre imbricated, dry and scarious.

Chiefly herbs, of homely aspect, more or less succulent, with mostly alternate leaves and no stipules nor scarious bracts, minute greenish flowers, with the free calyx imbricated in the bud; the stamens as many as its lobes, or occasionally fewer, and inserted opposite them or on their base; the 1-celled ovary becoming a 1-seeded thin utricle or rarely an achene.

Aquatic or marsh herbs, stemless or short-stemmed, with a tuft of fibrous roots, a cluster of linear and often loosely cellular grass-like leaves, and naked scapes sheathed at the base, bearing dense heads of monœcious or rarely diœcious small 2–3-merous flowers, each in the axil of a scarious bract; the perianth double or rarely simple, chaffy; anthers introrse; the fruit a 2–3-celled 2–3-seeded capsule; seeds pendulous, orthotropous; embryo at the apex of mealy albumen.—Chiefly tropical plants, a few in northern temperate regions.