Description:

• Annuals or perennials; tufted or with elongated woody, usually horizontal, rhizomes
• Culms nodose, usually leafy
• Leaves cauline, ligulate; basal sheath closed, adaxial apex truncate to V-shaped; blade short or well developed, flat, linear, with keeled midrib, profile V-shaped or flanged V-shaped
• Inflorescence a paniculate corymb, elongate, with remote lower branches, often reduced to a ± subterminal head, sometimes to 3-few spikelets
• Spikelets of many spirally imbricate glumes, 2 lowest glumes empty, upper several to many bisexual, fertile, aristate, hairy, uppermost with male florets or empty
• Perianth of 1, 3 or 6 scales or bristles or both, sometimes rudimentary or 0
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Style linear, often short, with base usually persistent; branches 3, elongate
• Nutlet obovoid, 3-angled, sessile, falling with perianth when present, crowned with persistent style base
• x = 9, 13, 19, 23

Nomenclature:

• Fuirena Rottb.
  • Rottbøll: 70, t. 19 (1773)
  • Schrader: 15 (1832)
  • Clarke: 260 (1898)
  • Clarke: 461 (1902)
  • Podlech: 24 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 108 (1972)
  • Compton: 69 (1976)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 42 (1984)
  • Forbes: 49 (1987)
  • Gordon-Gray: 96 (1995)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, ± cosmopolitan in warm areas
• Southern Africa: Species ± 12, widespread in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape