Description:

• Annual, tufted, robust
• Leaf blade linear-lanceolate, expanded or rolled, glaucous; ligule a fringe of short hairs
• Inflorescence a spike, raceme, or contracted panicle, sometimes spike-like, often in glomerate racemes; spikelets solitary or clustered, sessile or subsessile
• Spikelet rather large, spiny, laterally compressed, becoming twisted when mature, disarticulating with glumes (spikelets falling whole); glumes unequal to ± equal, much shorter than spikelet, membranous, ovate, acuminate, hairy or glabrous, awnless; lower glume 3-nerved; upper glume 5-nerved
• Florets few to many; lower 2 florets sterile and uppermost floret reduced, male or sterile; remaining florets bisexual, keeled, woolly at base near margins; sterile lemma 6-8-nerved; bisexual lemma firmer than glumes, 9-11-nerved in upper half, almost nerveless below, entire, hairy, mucronate to awned; awn straight, stout, deflexed, shorter than body of lemma; palea as long as lemma, shortly 2-lobed, 2-keeled, with keels winged and ciliate on back, woolly at base
• Lodicules 0
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles connate at base, plumose above
• Caryopsis ellipsoid
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Entoplocamia Stapf
  • Stapf: 318 (1898)
  • Stapf: 710 (1900)
  • Chippindall: 189 (1955)
  • Launert: 81 (1970)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 201 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 138 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 379 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1: Entoplocamia aristulata (Hack. & Rendle) Stapf, Africa
• Southern Africa: Namibia