Description:

• Perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade narrow, usually expanded; ligule a long-fringed membrane or fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence contracted, fulvous or rufous, of several short, spike-like racemes ± appressed along elongated central axis; rachis fragile, internodes and pedicels linear to clavate; spikelets paired, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, pedicels free
• Sessile spikelet deciduous with contiguous joint of rachis and pedicel, dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes, elliptic; glumes ± equal, hairy, dissimilar; lower glume indurated, broadly rounded on back, ± 2-keeled with inflexed margins, nerves generally indistinct; upper glume thinner, not 2-keeled, 1-3-nerved
• Florets 2; lower floret reduced to a hyaline, lanceolate lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, muticous or mucronate; callus short, truncate, hairy, hairs usually tawny, half as long as to longer than spikelet; palea small, hyaline, nerveless
• Lodicules 2, cuneate
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles 2, plumose
• Caryopsis ellipsoid

• Pedicelled spikelet slightly smaller than sessile one, deciduous with pedicel, female; palea small
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Eriochrysis P.Beauv.
  • Palisot de Beauvois: 8 (1812)
  • Stapf: 321 (1898) under Saccharum L.
  • Stapf: 91 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 475 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 706 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 331 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 165 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 395 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 7, Africa and tropical America, 1 species in India
• Southern Africa: Species 2, N Botswana, northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape