Description:

• Perennial, tufted, often robust, sometimes rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear, expanded or whole blade terete; ligule an unfringed to a fringed membrane
• Inflorescence a panicle, open or contracted, often large and plumose; rachis tough, internodes and pedicels slender and free; spikelets paired, unequally pedicelled, similar in form and function
• Spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes, narrowly oblong to lanceolate, surrounded by an involucre of spreading hairs from callus; glumes ± equal in size, as long as spikelet, very dissimilar, awnless; lower glume ± flattened on back, 2-keeled with inflexed margins, nerves present between keels; upper glume 1-keeled
• Florets 2, lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, awnless or sometimes mucronate; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, entire or finely bidentate, awned or awnless; awn straight or geniculate, as long as to longer than body of lemma; callus very short, truncate, hairy with long, spreading hairs; palea minute
• Lodicules 2, fleshy
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Caryopsis oblong to lanceolate
• x = 7 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Miscanthus Andersson
  • Andersson: 165 (1856)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 702 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 332 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 221 (1990)
• Miscanthidium Stapf
  • Stapf: 89 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 477 (1955)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 609 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 7, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, N Namibia, N Botswana and mainly in the eastern and northern regions of South Africa with records from one small area near Cape Town