Description :

• Plants caespitose, sometimes forming tall, slender tussocks
• Rhizomes often well developed, sometimes short
• Culms simple, very rarely branching, often with clusters of sterile shoots at nodes in the year after flowering
• Leaf sheaths persistent, closely convolute, apical half often becoming lacerate
• Male inflorescence of many pendulous, cylindrical spikelets
• Male spikelets : bracts chartaceous, many, all fertile; perianth compressed; perianth segments 6, outer lateral ones boat-shaped, keeled, usually longer than inner; anthers exserted at anthesis
• Female inflorescence differing from male, of 1-several larger, stiffly erect spikelets; spathes generally small
• Female spikelets : bracts cartilaginous, longer than florets, all fertile; perianth segments 6, cartilaginous, persistent, outer lateral ones keeled or winged; staminodes well developed; ovary 1-locular; style 1, densely brush-like, exserted from bracts at anthesis
• Fruit a soft-walled nutlet

Nomenclature:

• Thamnochortus P.J.Bergius
  • Bergius: 353, t. 5, fig. 8 (1767)
  • Masters: 119 (1897)
  • Pillans: 358 (1928)
  • Linder: 471 (1985)
  • Linder: 253 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species ± 33, mostly Western Cape, also Eastern Cape, from Clanwilliam to Uitenhage

Additional Notes:

• Thamnochortus insignis Mast., is of major economic importance for thatching