Description:

• Perennial, sometimes annual, rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear, expanded; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence of paired or digitate, spike-like racemes; internodes and pedicels often stout and clavate, usually exposed on back as U- or V-shaped segments; spikelets paired, secund, in long-short combinations: usually one sessile or subsessile, the other pedicelled, rarely both unequally pedicelled
• Sessile or subsessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, dissimilar; lower glume concave or somewhat convex on back, coriaceous to chartaceous, glabrous to hairy, markedly nerved upwards, usually 2-keeled, keels wingless to winged; upper glume boat-shaped, keeled at least above, awnless or awned or with a bristle, often rather broad
• Florets 2; lower floret male or sterile, lemma membranous to hyaline, awnless; palea well developed; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, membranous to hyaline, 1-5-nerved, 2-lobed, awned from between lobes; awn geniculate, twisted, glabrous; callus inserted in concave top of internode; palea ± as long as lemma, hyaline
• Lodicules 2, cuneate, fleshy, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary with stigmas linear-oblong, plumose
• Caryopsis oblong to lanceolate, dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet similar to sessile spikelet or ± reduced, dorsiventrally or laterally compressed, often asymmetrical, awned or awnless
• x = 10 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Ischaemum L.
  • Linnaeus: 1049 (1753)
  • Stapf: 326 (1898)
  • Chippindall: 486 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 746 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 345 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 190 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 498 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, throughout the tropics, but mainly in Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, N Namibia, N Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, and Eastern Cape