Description:

• Perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, expanded; ligule an unfringed to rarely a fringed membrane
• Inflorescence of few to many spike-like, paired racemes embraced or subtended by a linear to lanceolate spatheole in a leafy spatheate false panicle, raceme-pairs with (1)2(-10) sessile spikelets per pair, 1 pair of homogamous spikelets at base of lower raceme; raceme bases unequal, terete, sometimes deflexed, apex oblique, produced into a long scarious appendage, internodes and pedicels linear; spikelets paired, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled, dissimilar
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, narrow-oblong to narrow-lanceolate, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, very dissimilar, coriaceous; lower glume with a shallow median groove, otherwise rounded on back and sides, shortly hairy; upper glume acute to apiculate, with or without an awn
• Florets 2; lower floret reduced to a lemma, hyaline, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, shortly 2-lobed, awned from between lobes; awn robust, geniculate, hairy; callus pungent, hairy; palea 0 or reduced
• Lodicules 2, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ovoid, glabrous; styles plumose
• Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid

• Pedicelled spikelet 9-14 mm long, ± as long as sessile spikelet, male, awnless or aristulate, narrowed at base to an indistinct callus
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Hyperthelia Clayton
  • Clayton: 438 (1966)
  • Chippindall: 510 (1955) under Hyparrhenia Fourn.
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 786 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 356 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 188 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 485 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 6, tropical and southern Africa, introduced to tropical America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Hyperthelia dissoluta (Nees ex Steud.) Clayton, N Namibia, Bo­tswana, northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal