Description:

• Perennial, tufted, with short branched rhizomes, often forming low cushions
• Leaf blade linear or ovate-lanceolate to ovate, usually folded, sometimes rigid or succulent; ligule a minute fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence usually a single raceme, rarely a dense, contracted panicle; spikelets solitary, on hairy pedicels
• Spikelet 10-15 mm long, ± laterally compressed, lanceolate, disarticulating above glumes; glumes ± equal, as long as to longer than spikelet, similar, lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, membranous, rounded, flat or with more than one keel, 5-7-nerved, minutely hairy, acute, awnless
• Florets 3-9; bisexual; uppermost floret reduced and sterile; lemma similar in texture to glumes, membranous, 7-9-nerved, hairy, hairs in tufts or not tufted, mixed, tufts usually in a transverse row at base of lobes with 1 or 2 larger marginal tufts below these, 2-lobed, lobes triangular, acute or nerve excurrent into an awn (bristle), central awn geniculate, loosely twisted in lower third, ± as long as body of lemma; callus long, narrowly obtuse, hairy; palea hyaline (thinner than lemma), narrow-elliptic, rounded to emarginate, 2-keeled, 2-nerved, nerves prominent, hairy in upper half
• Lodicules 2, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles short, shortly plumose
• Fruit an achene with free pericarp
• x = 7

Nomenclature:

• Dregeochloa Conert
  • Conert: 335 (1966)
  • Stapf: 530 (1899) under Danthonia Stapf
  • Chippindall: 245 (1955) under Danthonia Stapf
  • Launert: 68 (1970)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 177 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 118 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 345 (1994)
• Danthonia Stapf
  • Stapf: 516 (1899) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 2, S Namibia to Northern Cape