Description :

• Perennial, rhizomatous, mat-forming, prickly, rigid, glaucous
• Leaf blade linear or linear-lanceolate, rigid, thick, needle-like, pungent, flat or rolled, standing at an angle of ± 45 degrees to culm; ligule a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a dense and spike-like panicle with short, crowded subsecund branches; spikelets 2-ranked, solitary, shortly pedicelled
• Spikelet ± laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes and between florets; glumes very unequal, similar, shorter than spikelet, scarious to membranous, narrowly ovate, rounded or weakly keeled, 1-nerved, subacute, awnless or minutely mucronate
• Florets 4-9, bisexual, with upper floret reduced and sterile; lemma broadly elliptic, similar to firmer in texture to glumes, membranous, 3-nerved, lateral nerves long hairy all over, central nerve hairy towards base, hairs shorter, incised, shortly 2-lobed, mucronate or awned on back just below apex; awn short, stout; callus short, hairy; palea ± as long as lemma, lanceolate, truncate, 2-keeled, concave between keels, scabrid on keels, sparsely pilose
• Lodicules 2, broadly cuneate, glabrous
• Stamens 3; anthers long
• Ovary obovoid; styles free, plumose
• Caryopsis (achene) ellipsoid, with free pericarp

Nomenclature:

• Odyssea Stapf
  • Stapf: t. 3100 (1922)
  • Stapf: 539 (1900) under Diplachne P.Beauv.
  • Chippindall: 118 (1955)
  • Launert: 132 (1970)
  • Phillips: 286 (1974)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 212 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 225 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 654 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, coastal Red Sea, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Odyssea paucinervis (Nees) Stapf, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West and northwest Western Cape