Description :

• Perennial, densely tufted, sometimes with shortly creeping rhizomes; culm bearded at nodes with ring of white appressed hairs
• Leaf blade narrowly linear, rolled or expanded; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence a terminal, cylindrical, spike-like, solitary raceme, rarely digitate, internodes slender, semiterete to linear, very obliquely articulated below spikelets; spikelets paired, in long-short combinations, unequally pedicelled, one subsessile, the other pedicelled, dissimilar
• Subsessile spikelet persistent, flattened dorsally or somewhat terete, awnless, usually male or sterile, otherwise resembling pedicelled spikelet; callus 0

• Long-pedicelled spikelet falling separately, not noticeably compressed, somewhat terete; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume firmly chartaceous to coriaceous, glabrous to hairy, finely 2-keeled upwards, margins inflexed, very narrow, obscurely nerved; upper glume thinner, grooved on either side of rounded keel
• Florets 2, lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, hyaline, 2-nerved, ciliate or ciliolate upwards, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma stipitiform, less firm than glumes (hyaline at base), passing into a flexuous or geniculate, hairy awn; callus pungent to acute, densely hairy, obliquely attached to pedicel; palea minute, hyaline or 0
• Lodicules 2, small, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles terminal, plumose
• Caryopsis terete
• x = 5, 10 (polyploidy).
  

Nomenclature:

• Trachypogon Nees
  • Nees ab Esenbeck: 341 (1829)
  • Stapf: 331 (1898)
  • Chippindall: 494 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 707 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 338 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 336 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 955 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 3-13, Africa, Madagascar and tropical America
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Trachypogon spicatus (L.f.) Kuntze, widespread, not in very dry areas