Description :

• Annual or perennial, tufted, stoloniferous, usually creeping, rooting at nodes; culms and overlapping leaf sheaths usually compressed, abruptly contracted at base, often grouped in a fan-shaped arrangement; ligule a narrow, fringed membrane
• Inflorescence mostly terminal, spike-like, secund, of several to many short racemes embedded in cavities in a thickened central axis, each raceme bearing up to 8 spikelets on a rachis that is usually produced beyond upper spikelet to a subulate tip; spikelets sessile to shortly pedicelled, falling entire at maturity or together with adjacent internode of central axis; lower glume abaxial
• Spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, lanceolate or ovate, plump, awnless; glumes very unequal, dissimilar, membranous, awnless; lower glume generally shorter than spikelet, nerveless; upper glume similar to lower or ± as long as spikelet, 5-9-nerved
• Florets 2; lower floret male or sterile; lemma chartaceous to coriaceous, acute or acuminate, 3-9-nerved; palea well developed; upper floret bisexual; lemma firmer than glumes, not becoming indurated, similar to lower but smaller, faintly 3-5-nerved, glabrous, entire, margins inrolled and covering palea but leaving tip free, awnless; palea usually indurated, 2-nerved
• Lodicules 2
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles free, plumose above
• Caryopsis lanceolate to oblong, plano-convex
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Stenotaphrum Trin.
  • Trinius: 175 (1820)
  • Stapf: 438 (1899)
  • Chippindall: 367 (1955)
  • Sauer: 202 (1972)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 547 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 293 (1986)
  • Clayton: 111 (1989)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 314 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 901 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 7, tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Stenotaphrum secundatum (Walt.) Kuntze mainly along coast from KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape to Western Cape with records in eastern Caprivi (Namibia) and S Mpumalanga; S. dimidiatum (L.) Brongn. sporadic in N KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape