Description :

• Annual or perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, usually folded, midrib forming a keel, tip acute to obtuse; ligule a narrow, fringed membrane
• Inflorescence sometimes solitary and terminal, usually in a spatheate false panicle with solitary, cylindrical, narrow racemes; internode and pedicels linear to clavate; spikelets paired, dissimilar, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet 2.5-9.0 mm long, dorsiventrally compressed or squeezed between internode and pedicel, falling with glumes and adjacent internode of rachis; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, lower chartaceous to subcoriaceous, rounded or flattened on back, glabrous or hairy, 2-keeled or sharply inflexed (both sometimes together), keels lateral to frontal with several intercarinal nerves, mucronate or awnless; upper glume membranous, keeled at least upwards, rarely awned
• Florets 2; lower floret reduced to a lemma, hyaline, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, rarely entire, incised, deeply or shallowly 2-lobed, rarely awnless, usually awned from sinus; awn glabrous, geniculate, usually short, sometimes inconspicuous; callus obtuse, short, hairy at base, inserted in crateriform and scariously rimmed top of internode; palea 0
• Lodicules 2, minute
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Ovary glabrous; stigmas laterally exserted, plumose above
• Caryopsis linear, subterete

• Pedicelled spikelet symmetrical, commonly smaller than sessile spikelet, male or sterile; lower glume sometimes awned; spikelet sometimes reduced to a glume
• x = 5, 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Schizachyrium Nees
  • Nees ab Esenbeck: 331 (1829)
  • Stapf: 334 (1898)
  • Stapf: 194 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 502 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 754 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 352 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 288 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 845 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 60, throughout the tropics
• Southern Africa : Species 6, N Namibia, N Botswana, northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal