Plants perennial; often scrambling. Culms to 3 m, decumbent. Leaves not aromatic; sheaths open; ligules membranous; blades linear, often pseudopetiolate. Inflorescences false panicles, individual inflorescence units with solitary rames; rames to 1 cm, often enclosed by the subtending leaf sheath, with 1 sessile and 2 unequally pedicellate spikelets; disarticulation at the base of the sessile spikelets, sometimes also at the base of the pedicellate spikelets. Sessile spikelets laterally compressed, with a large, bulbous callus; lower glumes coriaceous, without keels or wings, smooth, bidentate; upper glumes unawned; upper lemmas awned or unawned. Pedicels flat, wide, adjacent to each other, appressed but not fused to the rame axes. Pedicellate spikelets usually unequal, unawned, 1 staminate or bisexual and as large as the sessile spikelet, the other sterile and usually smaller. x = 10. Name from the Latin apluda, chaff, a reference to the appearance of the inflorescence after the spikelets have fallen.

Apluda is treated here as consisting of a single weedy species that is native to tropical Asia and Australia, where it grows primarily in thickets and forest margins. It is not known to be established in the Flora region.

1.   Apluda mutica L.
Mauritian Grass

Culms to 3 m, decumbent and rooting from the lower nodes. Blades 5-25 cm long, 2-10 mm wide, flat, attenuate distally. Inflorescences 3-40 cm; rames to 10 mm long, subtending sheaths 3.5-10 mm, narrowly ovate in side view. Sessile spikelets 2-6 mm; lower glumes narrowly elliptic-lanceolate; upper lemmas unawned or awned; awns 4-12 mm. Pedicellate spikelets broadly lanceolate; larger spikelets 2-5 mm; smaller spikelets 2-4 mm. 2n = 20, 40.

Reed (1964) reported finding Apluda mutica on chrome ore piles in Canton, Maryland (a temporary unloading ground for ores). The report has not been verified because his voucher specimens were not accessible at the time of writing. They were acquired by the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2001.