Description :

• Perennial, rarely annual, erect, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, flat or rolled, glabrous or loosely hairy, glaucous, auricles from leaf sheaths present; ligule an unfringed membrane, almost hyaline
• Inflorescence of 1, rarely 2, racemes, solitary or subdigitate, terminal, cylindrical or slightly flattened, spike-like or rigid, elongated, disarticulating easily and obliquely; internodes stout, clavate, tip crateriform with lobed scarious rim, pedicels free of rachis, racemes obliquely jointed; spikelets in pairs, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet 7-8 mm long, dorsiventrally compressed, elliptic, falling with glumes, adjacent joint of rachis and pedicel; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume coriaceous, hairy or glabrous, flattened on back, 2-keeled towards tip, wingless; upper glume membranous, boat-shaped, keeled
• Florets 2; lower floret male; lemma hyaline, 2-nerved, awnless; palea present; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, entire, delicately hairy, awnless; callus oblique, broadly obtuse to cuneate, hairy, inserted into top of internode; palea almost equalling lemma
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, cuneate, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary narrowly oblong, terete at middle, glabrous; styles linear, plumose
• Caryopsis ellipsoid

• Pedicelled spikelet with lower glume drawn out into a long curved awn, awn 5-120 mm long; florets 2, both male, rarely one bisexual or sterile and reduced to glumes
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Urelytrum Hack.
  • Hackel: 25 (1887)
  • Stapf: 330 (1898)
  • Chippindall: 516 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 832 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 361 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 349 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 988 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 7, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Urelytrum agropyroides (Hack.) Hack., N Namibia, northern provinces of South Africa, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland