Description:

• Annual or perennial, sometimes dwarf shrubs, rhizomatous or stoloniferous, sometimes with a bulb or corm, tufted or decumbent
• Leaf blade linear to linear-lanceolate, expanded, folded or rolled, rarely much reduced; ligule a fringed or unfringed membrane, or a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence a panicle or reduced to a raceme with a few spikelets, or to a single spikelet, open or contracted, sometimes spike-like, rarely secund; spikelets solitary or sometimes clustered, pedicelled
• Spikelet laterally to not noticeably compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes ± equal to unequal, shorter to longer than spikelet, membranous, similar, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, hairy or glabrous, 5-nerved, sometimes shortly mucronate, awnless
• Florets 3; lower 2 florets sterile, reduced to lemmas, usually of similar size and differing from smaller bisexual lemma, occasionally first sterile lemma short and glume-like and second sterile lemma resembling bisexual lemma; sterile lemmas stiffly membranous, usually scabrid, one or both transversely rugose, tuberculate or smooth, hairy or glabrous, awnless or mucronate or awned from back or tapering into awn; awn longer or shorter than lemma body, sometimes bases of second sterile lemma and bisexual lemma coming together in a hinge-like joint resembling an earlobe, which may have a membranous appendage; uppermost floret bisexual; lemma firmer than glumes, smaller and more laterally compressed than sterile lemmas, 5-7-nerved, usually glabrous, rarely long-villous, sometimes mucronate, awnless; callus 0; palea linear or boat-shaped, almost as long as lemma, keeled, finely 2-nerved
• Lodicules 2, large and flat, usually ovate or 2-lobed
• Stamens 6 (5, 4, 3 or 1)
• Ovary obovoid; styles free, plumose or brush-like above
• Caryopsis ellipsoid
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ehrharta Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 217 (1779) name conserved
  • Stapf: 660 (1900)
  • Stent: 275 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 34 (1955)
  • Clayton: 38 (1970)
  • Launert: 39 (1971)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 76 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell: 67 (1987)
  • Gibbs Russell & Ellis: 51 (1987)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 121 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 361 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 35, southern Africa to Ethiopia, Indonesia to New Zealand
• Southern Africa: Species 22, mainly southern and western areas of the Cape region, a few widespread