Description:

• Perennial, tufted, rhizomatous (rhizome often oblique)
• Leaf blade linear to linear-lanceolate, expanded or rolled; sheaths keeled, compressed; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence an open or contracted panicle, lobed, branches secund; spikelets crowded in dense shortly pedicelled clusters at ends of short main branches
• Spikelet 5-9 mm long, strongly laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes ± equal or unequal, similar, shorter than spikelet, lanceolate to ovate, rigid, membranous, 3-nerved, strongly keeled, glabrous or hairy on keel, acuminate to mucronate or awned
• Florets 2-5(7), bisexual; uppermost floret often sterile; lemma firmer in texture than glumes, lanceolate-oblong, 5-nerved, strongly keeled, keels hairy or scabrid, shortly awned; awn straight, shorter than body of lemma; callus short, glabrous; palea slightly shorter than lemma, 2-keeled
• Lodicules 2, bilobed, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles plumose
• Caryopsis ovoid, tightly enclosed by hardened lemma and palea
• x = 7 (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• *Dactylis L.
  • Linnaeus: 71 (1753)
  • Stapf: 695 (1900)
  • Chippindall: 771 (1955)
  • Clayton: 43 (1970)
  • Tutin: 170 (1980)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 102 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 99 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 289 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1-5, temperate Eurasia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Dactylis glomerata L., cultivated and sometimes occurring as an escape