Description:

• Perennial or annual, often trailing
• Leaf blade linear-lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, cordate and amplexicaul at base; ligule an unfringed to fringed membrane (rarely)
• Inflorescence of slender racemes, subdigitate, internodes and pedicels filiform to linear; spikelets usually paired, secund, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, pedicels free from rachis
• Sessile spikelet laterally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal in size, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume rounded on back, with or without 2 lateral keels, spinously muricate; upper glume laterally compressed
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual, lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, awned from low down on back, awn glabrous, geniculate; callus truncate, inserted into hollow top of internode; palea reduced or 0
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Ovary glabrous
• Caryopsis terete

• Pedicelled spikelet variable in form, male, sterile or vestigial
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Arthraxon P.Beauv.
  • Palisot de Beauvois: 111 (1812)
  • Stapf: 162 (1917)
  • Van Welzen: 255 (1981)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 741 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 353 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 56 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 138 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 7, Old World tropics, but mainly in India
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Arthraxon lanceolatus (Roxb.) Hochst. var. lanceolatus, Mpumalanga