Description :

• Annual or perennial, tufted, sometimes decumbent, long rhizomatous, rooting at nodes
• Leaf blade expanded, long-linear usually auriculate; ligule a long, firm, unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence an open or contracted panicle; spikelets solitary, shortly pedicelled; pedicels linear, somewhat cup-shaped at apex
• Spikelet unconventional, strongly laterally compressed, scabrid to hispid; glumes 0 and represented by a small, 2-lobed cupule, or present and then ± equal, reduced and small, suborbicular, thinly membranous, nerveless, acuminate, awnless
• Florets 3, lower florets 2, sterile, reduced to narrow or bristle-like lemmas, much shorter than spikelet; upper floret bisexual; lemma coriaceous, oblong to elliptic, strongly keeled, rigidly ciliate, scabrid, rugose, strongly 3-9-nerved, apex obtuse or acute, (mucronate or awnless in cultivated forms) or awned; awn straight, sometimes flexous, much longer than body of lemma, 10-160 mm long, scabrid; palea as long as lemma and similar in texture, 3-nerved
• Lodicules elliptic-lanceolate to obovate, 2-lobed, rarely entire
• Stamens 6; anthers linear
• Ovary glabrous; styles short, free; stigmas plumose
• Caryopsis not grooved
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Oryza L.
  • Linnaeus: 333 (1753)
  • Stent: 274 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 32 (1955)
  • Launert: 134 (1970)
  • Clayton: 28 (1970)
  • Launert: 31 (1971)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 71 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 229 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 672 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 25, throughout tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa : Species 3, northern regions of Namibia and Botswana, Northern Province, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal