Description:

• Annual or perennial, tufted, mat-forming; often stoloniferous, rhizomatous or rooting from lower nodes, sometimes geniculate
• Leaf blade linear to linear-lanceolate, expanded or rolled; ligule an unfringed membrane or fringe of hairs
• Inflorescence of 2-9 spikes, digitate or subdigitate, 1-sided on a flattened rachis, tips of rachis a barren, rigid, pointed extension; spikelets solitary, sessile, densely imbricate, biseriate
• Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes, usually not between florets; glumes ± equal, shorter than spikelet, membranous, strongly keeled, prominently 1-nerved, both or only upper with nerve excurrent into a rigid awn that curves outwards from back of glume; lower glume ovate, acute; upper glume elliptic-oblong
• Florets 3-7, bisexual; uppermost floret rudimentary; lemma ovate, membranous, keeled, glabrous, 1-3-nerved, lateral nerves obscure, keeled, keels often scabrid, acute and awnless to mucronate or awned; awn short, straight; palea ± as long as lemma, membranous, ovate-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, 2-keeled, deeply concave between keels
• Lodicules 2, cuneate, minute, hyaline
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles plumose above
• Caryopsis angular, surface with ornamentation, enclosed in free, hyaline pericarp
• x = 10, 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Dactyloctenium Willd.
  • Willdenow: 1029 (1809)
  • Stapf: 646 (1900)
  • Stent: 292 (1924)
  • Fisher & Schweickerdt: 49 (1941)
  • Chippindall: 131 (1955)
  • Launert: 53 (1970)
  • Phillips: 250 (1974)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 223 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 99 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 290 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 13, warm regions of the world
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread, not recorded from Western Cape