Description:

• Coarse perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade expanded or folded; basal sheath often strongly laterally compressed; ligule a fringed membrane to a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence of spike-like racemes, solitary and terminal or aggregated into a spatheate, leafy false panicle, racemes cylindrical, internodes clavate, mostly shorter than sessile spikelets, rachis joints transverse; spikelets in pairs, secund, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, pedicels free
• Sessile spikelet 4.5-5.0 mm long, dorsiventrally compressed, glabrous; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, indurated, awnless; lower glume flat or slightly rounded on back, smooth or variously sculptured, glabrous, 2-keeled upwards, keels winged, faintly 7-nerved; upper glume keeled, acute, wingless
• Florets 2, lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, 2-nerved or nerveless, awnless; palea reduced or 0; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, 2-nerved or nerveless, entire, glabrous, awnless; callus truncate with prominent peg, glabrous; palea present, relatively long
• Lodicules 2, cuneate, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles plumose
• Caryopsis oblong, dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet smaller than sessile spikelet, well developed or vestigial, male or sterile, rarely bisexual, awnless
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Coelorachis Brongn.
  • Brongniart: 64 (1831)
  • Stapf: 78 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 523 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 840 (1982)
  • Veldkamp et al.: 288 (1986)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 365 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 88 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 255 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 21, mainly tropical
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Coelorachis capensis Stapf, NE KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape