Description:

• Annual
• Leaf blade linear-lanceolate, expanded, often cordate at base; ligule an unfringed to fringed membrane
• Inflorescence of terminal and axillary branches, these often many, forming a spatheate, leafy false panicle; spikelet-bearing axis with a smooth, globose or elongated, hard, ivory-like bead or cupule comprising 2 racemes; female raceme enclosed by bead (a modified leaf sheath), consisting of 1 sessile spikelet accompanied by 2 barren pedicels; male raceme exserted from mouth of bead as a tassel and falling early; spikelets in pairs or threes, 1 or 2 sessile, 1 pedicelled
• Female spikelet falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, beaked, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume subglobose, flattened on back; upper glume strongly keeled
• Florets 2, lower floret sterile, reduced to a membranous lemma, awnless; upper floret female; lemma less firm to similar in texture to glumes, membranous, mucronate, entire, glabrous, 3-5-nerved, mucronate (beaked); palea membranous
• Lodicules 0
• Stamens 0, or 3 staminoids
• Ovary glabrous; stigmas 2, exserted from bead
• Caryopsis subglobose to ellipsoid

• Male spikelet lanceolate to elliptic-oblong; lower glume flat on back, 2-keeled, keels winged above, upper glume boat-shaped
• Florets 2, both male or one sterile; lemma and palea membranous
• Stamens 3
• x = 5 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Coix L.
  • Linnaeus: 972 (1753)
  • Stapf: 27 (1917)
  • Chippindall: 524 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 857 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 373 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 89 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 256 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 5, tropical Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 1.: *Coix lacryma-jobi L., occurring sporadically in eastern southern Africa as an escape from cultivation
  • Cultivated for the 'beads' which are strung into necklaces