Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual, tufted, rarely straggling, sometimes rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear, never aromatic; ligule an unfringed to fringed membrane
• Inflorescence of spike-like racemes, usually paired or digitate, rarely solitary, terminal or axillary and crowded into a spatheate false panicle, internodes filiform, linear to ovoid or clavate, raceme-bases unequal, ± terete, racemes not deflexed at maturity; spikelets paired, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet (2 or 3)5-11 mm long, dorsiventrally or laterally or not noticeably compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, glabrous or hairy; lower glume indurated, flat, shallowly furrowed or deeply grooved on back, sometimes pitted, 2-keeled, keels lateral or dorsal, wingless or narrowly winged, margins folded; upper glume keeled upwards, awnless, mucronate or awned
• Florets 2; lower floret reduced to a lemma, hyaline, 2-nerved, awnless; upper floret bisexual, lemma less firm in texture than glumes, membranous or firm, 2-lobed, awned from sinus, awn geniculate, conspicuous with a glabrous or hairy column, sometimes entire and awnless; callus obtuse, short, inserted in concave top of internode; palea hyaline, nerveless, scale-like or 0
• Lodicules 2, minute
• Stamens 1-3
• Ovary glabrous; styles plumose
• Caryopsis narrowly lanceolate to oblong, subterete to plano-convex

• Pedicelled spikelet more conspicuous than sessile spikelet, occasionally suppressed, male or barren, usually awnless
• x = 5, 10 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Andropogon L.
  • Linnaeus: 1045 (1753)
  • Stapf: 334 (1898)
  • Chippindall: 495 (1955)
  • Anderson: 5 (1966)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 767 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 349 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 38 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 109 (1994)
• Diectomis Kunth
  • Kunth: 69 (1815) name conserved, not of P.Beauv.
  • Chippindall: 504 (1955)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, pantropical
• Southern Africa: Species 15, widespread