Description :

• Annual, coarse, often with prop roots
• Leaf blade lanceolate, base amplexicaul, expanded; ligule an unfringed or fringed membrane
• Inflorescence terminal, with many racemes, digitate or subdigitate, internodes thickened and clavate, disarticulating transversely; spikelets in pairs, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled; pedicelled spikelet reduced or represented by pedicel only
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes, rachis joint and pedicel; glumes ± equal, longer than spikelet, glabrous, awnless, dissimilar; lower glume crustaceous, rugose, without keels or wings, rounded on flanks; upper glume rugose, wingless
• Florets 2; lower floret male; lemma hyaline; palea well developed; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, 2-lobed, awned between lobes; awn glabrous, much longer than body of lemma; callus obtuse, hairy, fitting into concave top of internode; palea present
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis ellipsoid

• Pedicelled spikelet reduced or represented by flattened, linear pedicel
• x = 5

Nomenclature:

• Thelepogon Roth ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Roemer & Schultes: 46 (1817)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 744 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 346 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 334 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 938 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 1: Thelepogon elegans Roem. & Schult., tropical Africa extending eastwards to Indonesia
• Southern Africa : Namibia (Caprivi)