Description:

• Perennial, tufted, stoloniferous
• Leaf blade narrow-linear, expanded, tapering to a fine acuminate point; ligule an unfringed membrane, truncate
• Inflorescence of 1-5 spike-like racemes, digitate or subdigitate; spikelets solitary, shortly pedicelled
• Spikelet 6-10 mm long, plump, wedge-shaped, laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes but not between florets; glumes unequal, shorter than spikelet, membranous, 1-nerved, weakly keeled, awnless, dissimilar; lower glume shorter than upper glume, lanceolate, obtuse; upper glume oblong, notched at apex
• Florets 4-10, lower 2-4 bisexual, upper or uppermost floret reduced and sterile; lemmas firmer than glumes, similar, broad, obovate, rounded on back, 5-9-nerved, nerves slightly shorter than lemma, shortly 2-lobed, hairy, hairs short, stiff, sharp-pointed to obtuse or club-shaped, in rows on lower half or towards base of lobes, shortly awned from between lobes or from back near apex; awn straight to curved, not geniculate; callus hairy; palea elliptic-lanceolate, shortly 2-lobed, flat dorsally, 2-keeled, ciliate on keels
• Lodicules 2, oblong
• Stamens 3
• Ovary shortly stalked, oblong; styles fused at base, plumose
• Caryopsis dorsiventrally flattened, enclosed within a free hyaline pericarp
• x = 15 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Lintonia Stapf
  • Stapf: t. 2949 (1911)
  • Chippindall: 117 (1955)
  • Phillips: 302 (1974)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 235 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 201 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 553 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Lintonia nutans Stapf, Botswana, northern provinces of South Africa, Mpumalanga and Swaziland