Description :

• Annual or perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, flat or folded; lower leaf sheaths often compressed and keeled; ligule a fringed to unfringed membrane, truncate
• Inflorescence of solitary racemes embraced by sheathing spatheoles, these single or in dense branches on flexuous peduncles and gathered into a leafy false panicle; racemes very short, composed of a single, awned sessile spikelet and 2 pedicelled spikelets, the whole enclosed by an involucre of 4 sterile spikelets; internodes and pedicels linear, homogamous spikelets all sessile
• Sessile spikelet ± terete, usually deciduous; glumes ± equal, coriaceous except at apices, awnless; lower glume obtuse, usually not grooved
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, nerveless, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma stipitiform, passing directly into a stout geniculate awn; callus obtuse to pungent, hairy; palea minute or 0
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis lanceolate, channelled on one side

• Pedicelled spikelet narrowly lanceolate, male or sterile, awnless; callus long and slender, as long as or longer than pedicel which is often reduced to a stump
• x = 5, 10 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Themeda Forssk.
  • Forsskål: 178 (1775)
  • Stapf: 366 (1898)
  • Stapf: 415 (1919)
  • Chippindall: 490 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 829 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 360 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 334 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 940 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 18, tropical and subtropical regions of Old World, but mainly in Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Themeda triandra Forssk., widespread and very variable