Description :

• Perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, flat or folded, rarely terete; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence terminal, usually of many, ± flattened racemes, digitate to subdigitate, disarticulating transversely and often tardily, internodes and pedicels stout, clavate to inflated; spikelets in pairs, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, pedicels free of rachis
• Sessile spikelet 6-8 mm long, dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, glabrous, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume flattened on back, 2-keeled, strongly ridged due to prominent nerves
• Florets 2; lower floret male with a palea, or sterile and reduced to a lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma entire, less firm in texture than glumes, hyaline, awnless; callus truncate, minute
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis oblong, dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet resembling sessile spikelet, but usually smaller, awnless, male or sterile, rarely bisexual
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Phacelurus Griseb.
  • Grisebach: 428 (1846)
  • Chippindall: 488 (1955) under Ischaemum L.
  • Clayton: 175 (1978)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 349 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 718 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 9, Africa to Indo-China and Japan
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Phacelurus franksiae (J.M.Wood) Clayton, Drakensberg (KwaZulu-Natal)