Description :

• Perennial, tufted or decumbent, up to 650 mm tall, sometimes cushion-like
• Leaf blade long-linear, hard, rigid, wiry or flat and open, often strongly curved or curled, usually tightly rolled at an early stage; ligule a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a large, open or somewhat contracted panicle with 5-20 spikelets; spikelets solitary, pedicelled
• Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes ± equal, much longer than spikelet, similar, membranous to chartaceous, 1-3-nerved, glabrous or hairy, awned or awnless
• Florets 1 or 2, sometimes with rudiments of a third floret, bisexual; lemma similar in texture to firmer than glumes, membranous, oblong, 7-9(-11)-nerved, not keeled, hairy from between nerves, 2-lobed, lobes entire or shortly 2-toothed, each with a loosely twisted or straight bristle or awn from inner margin, central awn from between lobes, 4 or 5 times as long as lemma; awn flat, twisted, geniculate; callus short, blunt, hairy; palea ± as long as lemma, 2-keeled, hairy between keels, 2-toothed at apex
• Lodicules 2, glabrous or ciliolate
• Stamens 3
• Ovary obovoid, with a dense tomentum of branched hairs at apex; styles distinct, short, plumose
• Fruit an achene with free pericarp, fusiform, subglobose to globose or cuneate

Nomenclature:

• Pentameris P.Beauv.
  • Palisot de Beauvois: 92 (1812)
  • Stapf: 512 (1899)
  • Schweickerdt: 88 (1938)
  • Chippindall: 251 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 174 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 251 (1990)
  • Barker: 25 (1993)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 705 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 9, mainly mountainous areas of Western Cape into adjoining regions of Eastern Cape