Description :

• Annual or perennial, tufted, sometimes rhizomatous, usually robust
• Leaf blade expanded; ligule an unfringed to a fringed membrane or rarely a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a large, terminal, open panicle (densely contracted in cultivated grain species), internodes and pedicels filiform; spikelets in pairs, terminally in triplets, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled, pedicels free from rachis, dissimilar
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes (not disarticulating in cultivated forms); glumes ± equal, dissimilar, awnless or upper glume rarely awned; lower glume dorsally compressed, usually leathery and glossy at maturity, flat or rounded on back, 2-keeled and narrowly winged near apex
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, not becoming indurated, incised, usually 2-lobed, awnless or awned from between lobes; awn shorter to longer than body of lemma, geniculate, twisted, frequently short and straight in cultivars; callus obtuse, rarely pungent, hairy or glabrous; palea present or 0
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, usually ciliate
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; styles 2, terminal or subterminal, plumose
• Caryopsis mostly obovoid, dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet narrower than sessile spikelet, awnless, male or sterile, or reduced to a glume, awnless
• x = 5 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Sorghum Moench
  • Moench: 207 (1794) name conserved
  • Stapf: 104 (1917)
  • Stapf: 346 (1898)
  • Snowden: 191 (1954)
  • Chippindall: 457 (1955)
  • De Wet: 477 (1978)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 726 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 339 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 301 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 883 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 24, tropical and subtropical regions of the Old World
• Southern Africa : Species 3, widespread
  • Mostly introduced and extensively cultivated either for grain or fodder. Sorghum versicolor Andersson found in N Namibia, Botswana, the northern provinces of South Africa and KwaZulu-Natal, has apparently not played a role in the evolution of the cultivated sorghums