Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual, tufted and erect, forming tussocks, rarely trailing, rhizomatous, never aromatic
• Leaf blade linear, usually flat, rarely folded; ligule a scarious unfringed membrane, truncate or rounded
• Inflorescence of paired, short racemes enclosed by a spatheole; this crowded into a large leafy false panicle; racemes short, with 1 or 2 homogamous pairs of spikelets at base of lower raceme and 0-2 at base of upper raceme, these spikelets male or barren, awnless, raceme-bases flattened or terete, sometimes deflexed at maturity, pedicels and internodes linear; spikelets in pairs, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate-oblong, dorsiventrally compressed or terete, hairy or glabrous; glumes ± equal, very dissimilar; lower glume as long as spikelet, lanceolate, truncate or acute, rarely produced into 2 short awns, broadly rounded or flattened on back; upper glume obtuse to acute or mucronate, awnless
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma stipiform, less firm than glumes towards base, hyaline, 2-lobed, awned; awn stout, geniculate, column hairy, twisted; callus blunt to pungent, hairy, applied obliquely to apex of internode with its tip free; palea 0 or reduced
• Lodicules 2, cuneate, truncate or emarginate
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis oblong

• Pedicelled spikelet 3-8(-10) mm long, usually longer than sessile spikelet, narrowly lanceolate, acute, hairy or glabrous, male or sterile; callus 0; lower glume awnless or awned; upper glume awnless
• x = 10, 15 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Hyparrhenia Fourn.
  • Fournier: 51 (1886)
  • Stapf: 336 (1898) under Andropogon L.
  • Chippindall: 509 (1955)
  • Clayton: 38 (1969)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 788 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 354 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 182 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 483 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 55, mostly in Africa, few species in other tropical regions and the Mediterranean
• Southern Africa: Species 20, widespread