Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual, tufted
• Leaf blade narrow-linear, rolled or usually expanded, sometimes aromatic; ligule an unfringed to a fringed membrane
• Inflorescence terminal, or sometimes axillary in spatheate, leafy, false panicles, or digitate or subdigitate racemes with or without 1 or more homogamous pairs of spikelets; internodes and pedicels linear, solid, truncate to oblique at tip; spikelets in pairs, secund, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, free of rachis
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal; lower glume lanceolate or elliptic-oblong, obtuse to truncate, hairy, 2-keeled, acute to broadly obtuse; upper glume somewhat thinner in texture, 1-keeled, ciliate
• Florets 2, lower floret sterile, reduced to a lanceolate hyaline lemma, entire, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, reduced to a linear, entire, hyaline stipe, awned; awn geniculate, twisted, longer than body of lemma; callus very short, rounded, hairy; palea minute or suppressed
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, minute, glabrous
• Stamens 1-3
• Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; style plumose above
• Caryopsis oblong, dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet similar to sessile spikelet, male or sterile
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Dichanthium Willemet
  • Willemet: 11 (1796)
  • Chippindall: 480 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 722 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 342 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 105 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 320 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, Old World tropics
• Southern Africa: Species 2, 1 of which is naturalised, widespread except in Northern Cape and not recorded in Western and Eastern Cape