Description:

• Annual or perennial (usually short-lived), tufted or culms solitary, sometimes rooting from nodes
• Leaf blade linear, expanded, rolled or folded; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence a bilateral spike with spikelets sunk and lying edgeways in partial cavities on alternate sides of central axis; spikelets solitary, sessile
• Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes; glumes unequal; lower glume absent except in terminal spikelet, rarely present and then much reduced; upper glume facing outwards, membranous, shorter than to as long as spikelet, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, sometimes turgid in fruit, obtuse or subacute, 3-7-nerved, glabrous
• Florets 2-22, bisexual or uppermost floret reduced and sterile; lemma less firm to firmer in texture to glumes, coriaceous, lanceolate or elliptic, rounded dorsally, 5-7-nerved, glabrous, acute to obtuse or awned; awn straight; palea equalling or subequalling body of lemma, somewhat thinner in texture, lanceolate, lanceolate-elliptic or lanceolate-oblong, 2-keeled
• Lodicules 2, lanceolate with a lateral tooth
• Stamens 3
• Ovary truncate, glabrous; styles distinct, plumose
• x = 7 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Lolium L.
  • Linnaeus: 83 (1753)
  • Stapf: 738 (1900)
  • Stent: 303 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 58 (1955)
  • Launert: 42 (1971)
  • Hubbard: 41 (1970)
  • Humphries: 153 (1980)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 95 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 201 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 558 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 8, temperate regions of Eurasia, introduced elsewhere
• Southern Africa: Species ± 4, naturalised, widespread