Description :

• Perennial, tufted, coarse, with stout rhizomes; roots often aromatic
• Leaf blade linear; sheaths glabrous, compressed, keeled, especially in lower part; ligule a fringed membrane to a fringe of short hairs
• Inflorescence a terminal panicle of many, slender racemes, arranged in whorls along central axis; racemes fragile, internodes and pedicels linear, disarticulating transversely; spikelets paired, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet laterally compressed, falling with glumes, joint and pedicel; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, shortly awned, (at least one of them); lower glume rounded on back, 5-nerved, armed with short tubercle-based spines; upper glume 3-nerved
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, not keeled, glabrous, incised, 2-lobed, awned from sinus; awn straight or curved, glabrous, often inconspicuous; callus rounded, fitting in slightly hollowed tip of internode, hairy with short hairs; palea minute, hyaline, nerveless
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis oblong

• Pedicelled spikelet usually smaller than sessile spikelet, male or sterile; lemma awnless
• x = 5, 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Vetiveria Bory
  • Bory: 43 (1822)
  • Stapf: 156 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 496 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 739 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 342 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 352 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 997 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 10, tropical Africa, Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Vetiveria nigritana (Benth.) Stapf, N Namibia and N Botswana