Description:

• Perennial or annual, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, expanded, long, tapering to a fine apex; ligule an unfringed membrane, truncate
• Inflorescence of paired or rarely solitary racemes long exserted from narrow spatheoles and gathered into a false panicle; raceme bases filiform, unequal, rarely deflexed; internodes and pedicels linear; racemes with 1-10 homogamous spikelet pairs; spikelets in pairs or triplets, usually in long-short combination but lower spikelet homogamous and sessile
• Sessile spikelet linear-oblong, ± terete, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, coriaceous, awned, dissimilar; lower glume rounded on back and sides, not grooved, obtuse or truncate, at length dark brown; upper glume 3-nerved, back rounded and grooved, obliquely awned
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper floret bisexual; lemma hyaline, often with deeply bilobed apex; awned from sinus; awn stout, geniculate, column hairy; callus pungent; palea 0
• Lodicules 2, glabrous, small
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles plumose, laterally exserted
• Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid

• Pedicelled spikelet male or sterile, narrowly lanceolate, ± as long as sessile spikelet, white-villous; callus well developed
• x = 10

Nomenclature:

• Elymandra Stapf
  • Stapf: 407 (1919)
  • Clayton: 287 (1966)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 823 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 357 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 131 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 367 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 6, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Elymandra grallata (Stapf) Clayton, Namibia (Caprivi area) and N Botswana