Description:

• Perennial, tufted, rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear, expanded; ligule a fringed membrane
• Inflorescence an oblong panicle, open or contracted; spikelets solitary and shortly pedicelled or usually paired and unequally pedicelled with both spikelets alike or shorter-pedicelled spikelet sterile and reduced to a glume
• Spikelet lanceolate, laterally compressed, disarticulating beneath upper floret; glumes very unequal: lower glume acute to mucronate, 3-nerved; upper glume as long as spikelet, acuminate, 5-nerved
• Florets 2; lower floret male, rarely sterile or bisexual with lemma membranous, falcate, 3-7-nerved, obtuse, awnless, palea hyaline; upper floret bisexual, lemma similar to firmer in texture than glumes, glabrous, scabrid to scaberulous, 1-7-nerved, minutely 2-lobed at apex, rarely entire, lobes sometimes produced into short hair-like bristles, awned from between lobes, awn geniculate; callus short, hairy; palea 2-keeled
• Lodicules 2, cuneate, fleshy
• Stamens 3
• Ovary oblong, glabrous; styles distinct or connate at base, plumose
• Caryopsis oblong
• x = 7, 10, 12, 14 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Arundinella Raddi
  • Raddi: 37 (1823)
  • Stapf: 448 (1899)
  • Chippindall: 275 (1955)
  • Clayton: 121 (1967)
  • Hubbard: 407 (1974)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 316 (1986)
  • Clayton: 199 (1989)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 56 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 50, tropics and subtropics but mainly Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Arundinella nepalensis Trin., from northern provinces of South Africa, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape