Description :

• Perennial, robust, tall reed, long-rhizomatous
• Leaves cauline; leaf blade long, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, expanded or inrolled from margins, deciduous at base of blade or at base of leaf sheath; ligule a fringed membrane or a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a large, drooping, densely plumose panicle, open or contracted; spikelets solitary, pedicelled
• Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes very unequal, shorter than spikelet, membranous, 3-5-nerved, acuminate, subacute
• Florets 3-11; lowermost floret male or sterile, usually 3-nerved, acuminate, awnless; succeeding florets bisexual or rarely uppermost reduced; lemma decreasing in size upwards, similar in texture to glumes, membranous, linear-lanceolate, 1-3-nerved, glabrous but enveloped by long, silky hairs from callus, finely acuminate or tapering into an awn; awn straight, shorter than body of lemma; callus long, slender, blunt, hairy with long, silky hairs; palea shorter than lemma, oblong, linear-oblong or ovate-lanceolate; obtuse, 2-keeled, membranous or subhyaline
• Lodicules 2
• Stamens 3, sometimes 2 in lowest male floret, if present
• Ovary glabrous; style distinct, stigma plumose
• x = 12 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Phragmites Adans.
  • Adanson: 34, 559 (1763)
  • Stapf: 540 (1899)
  • Stent: 295 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 228 (1955)
  • Clayton: 113 (1967)
  • Clayton: 168 (1968)
  • Clayton: 117 (1970)
  • Gordon-Gray & Ward: 1 (1971)
  • Launert: 91 (1971)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 182 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 269 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 729 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 3, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa : Species 2, widespread in aquatic or semi-aquatic habitats