Description:

• Perennial, tufted, rhizomatous, sometimes geniculate
• Culms often strongly compressed
• Leaf blade linear, flat, folded, keeled, usually obtuse; sheaths strongly keeled, flabellate; ligule a fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence of 2-many, 1-sided spikes, digitate; spikelets densely packed in two rows on rachis; spikelets solitary, sessile
• Spikelet dark to golden brown, laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes, obovate; glumes unequal, dissimilar, shorter than spikelet, ± boat-shaped, membranous, glabrous; lower glume obliquely ovate, obtuse, awnless; upper glume elliptic, obtuse to bilobed, keeled, awned from below apex with awn up to half as long as body of glume
• Florets 2 or 3; lower floret bisexual; upper floret sterile, rarely male, lemma cuneate, truncate; rachilla terminating in a little clavate lemma; lemmas dissimilar, 2- to 3-nerved, brown to blackish, lower lemma broadly elliptic, ovate, or elliptic-oblong, keeled, long-hairy on margins and nerves, shortly 2-lobed, without mucro or awn, or mucronate or awned from below apex; awn short; palea ± same length as lemma, oblanceolate, 2-keeled, of same texture or thinner than lemma
• Lodicules 2, minute
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; style distinct, plumose
• Caryopsis plump, obovoid
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Eustachys Desv.
  • Desvaux: 188 (1810)
  • Stapf: 643 (1900)
  • Chippindall: 194 (1955)
  • Launert: 116 (1970)
  • Renvoize: 335 (1974)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 237 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 167 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 404 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 10, tropics, mostly America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Eustachys paspaloides (Vahl) Lanza & Mattei, widespread