Description :

• Perennial, tufted, often rooting at nodes
• Culms slender, ascending, geniculate, branched
• Leaf blade linear, expanded; ligule a fringed membrane or a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a solitary, terminal, contracted panicle, branches appressed to central axis, each branch disarticulating with a spikelet; spikelets solitary, surrounded by a ring of short hairs at base, subtended by a long, robust, awn-like bristle, supported on a long, pungent callus beneath spikelet, callus constituting stipe; cleistogamous spikelets resembling normal spikelets except for absence of bristle, occurring at base of inflorescence and hidden in uppermost leaf sheaths
• Spikelet dorsiventrally compressed; glumes ± equal, minute, rarely 0, similar, glabrous, awnless
• Florets 2, lower sterile, reduced to a lemma, dorsally flattened, 7-11-nerved, awnless; palea 0; upper floret bisexual; lemma firmer than glumes, similar to lower floret but convex dorsally, 7-nerved, glabrous, margins flat and exposed on palea, acuminate, awnless; palea ± as long as lemma
• Lodicules 2
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• x = 9

Nomenclature:

• Paratheria Griseb.
  • Grisebach: 236 (1866)
  • Stapf & Hubbard: 1084 (1934)
  • Launert: 143 (1970)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 305 (1986)
  • Clayton: 188 (1989)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 243 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 693 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, tropical west Africa, Madagascar, Cuba and Brazil
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Paratheria prostrata Griseb., Namibia, in Okavango River