Description :

• Annual, robust, tufted, erect, frequently with stilt roots from lower nodes
• Leaf blade broad, flat, blade and sheath usually hairy with stiff conspicuous, often irritant, tubercle-based hairs; ligule a short, narrow, fringed membrane
• Inflorescence a solitary cylindrical raceme, either terminal or aggregated into a spatheate false panicle, fragile; internodes squatly clavate, fused to adjacent pedicel; spikelets sunken, in pairs, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled but appearing sessile due to almost complete fusion of pedicel with rachis
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume coriaceous, flat-backed, smooth, 2-keeled, narrowly winged at apex, many-nerved
• Florets 2; lower floret male; lemma with membranous incurved margins, awnless; palea well developed; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, ± hyaline, entire, glabrous, awnless; callus truncate with prominent peg; palea lanceolate, flattened dorsally, membranous
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ovoid, glabrous; styles 2, distinct, plumose
• Caryopsis ovate in face view, crescentic in side view

• Pedicelled spikelet slightly smaller than sessile spikelet, male or sterile, falling separately, pedicel oblong, scarcely distinguishable from internode, compressed
• x = 9, 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Rottboellia L.f.
  • Linnaeus f.: 13, 114 (1782) name conserved, not of Scop.
  • Stapf: 72 (1917)
  • Pilger: 266 (1954)~(Page number suspect - No access to the publication)
  • Chippindall: 520 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 853 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 366 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 283 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 829 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 4, tropical and subtropical Africa and Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Rottboellia cochinchinensis (Lour.) Clayton, northern districts of Namibia, N Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga and N KwaZulu-Natal