Link, Hort. Berol.1:229.1827 Small perennial, ca 35 cm tall; culms slender, glabrous. Sheaths longer than the internodes, glabrous; blades mostly 8-15 cm long, ca 4 mm wide, glabrous or nearly so. Inflorescences of several, digitate racemes 6-10 cm long; rachis winged, scabrid on margins; spikelets 2 or 3 per node, appressed, ca 1.3 mm long; pedicels short, of variable lengths; first glume absent; second glume and sterile lemma equaling fruit, minutely pubescent at least near margin. Fruits dark brown, shiny, minutely striate. Croat 16572. Collected once in the Laboratory Clearing. That specimen had fruits in early August. Wide but scattered distribution in the New World; Panama through northern South America; West Indies; occasionally East Asia, from where it may have been introduced. In Panama, from tropical moist forest on BCI and in Colón.