Description :

• Perennial, long-stoloniferous; culms many-noded, branched, floating, smooth, spongy
• Leaf blade linear, expanded; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence spike-like, a coarse cylindrical raceme enveloped below by uppermost leaf sheath of which blade is as long as inflorescence; spikelet subtended by a solitary 4-6-lobed herbaceous scale or cupule, one lobe almost free, scabrid and awn-like, very long, the whole forming a purplish involucre-plus-bristle; spikelets solitary, supported on blunt stipe, falling entire with involucre and peduncle
• Spikelet lanceolate, dorsiventrally compressed; glumes unequal, awnless; lower glume hyaline, nerveless, sometimes absent; upper glume shorter than spikelet, membranous, 1-3-nerved
• Florets 2, lower floret male; lemma convex on back, acute, 9-nerved, awnless; palea well developed; upper floret bisexual; lemma firmer than glumes, as long as spikelet, cartilaginous below, entire, 7-nerved, margins flat and exposed on palea, tip caudate, awnless; palea as long as lemma, scaberulous on keels
• Lodicules 0
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ellipsoid or obovoid; style long, stigma 1, shortly plumose, exserted from apex
• Caryopsis oblong, dorsiventrally compressed

Nomenclature:

• Odontelytrum Hack.
  • Hackel: 86 (1898)
  • Stapf: t. 3074 (1922)
  • Stapf & Hubbard: 1086 (1934)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 668 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 305 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 225 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 652 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 1: Odontelytrum abyssinicum Hack., tropical east Africa, from Ethiopia to southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Mpumalanga