Description:

• Tiny annuals or medium-sized sparsely tufted perennials
• Culms erect, with basal nodes
• Leaves basal, eligulate; sheath with adaxial apex truncate; blade with or without keeled midrib, profile V-shaped or crescentiform
• Inflorescence capitate, of 1-5 spikes; subtending bracts 2(3), often expanded basally, blade setaceous, often recurved
• Spikes ± hemispherical; spikelet bracts several, hyaline, densely spirally imbricate, 2 lowest and frequently uppermost empty
• Spikelets with glumes longer than spikelet bracts, dorsiventrally compressed and connate at margins with adaxial 2-cleft valve, or trumpet-shaped, enclosing floret and rachilla when present, awned; florets mostly bisexual, uppermost frequently male
• Perianth 0
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Style branches 2 or 3
• Nutlet narrowly obovate, lenticular or subtrigonous, papillose

Nomenclature:

• Ascolepis Nees ex Steud.
  • Steudel: 105 (1855) name conserved
  • Clarke: 266 (1898)
  • Clarke: 473 (1902)
  • Schonland: 54 (1922)
  • Podlech: 3 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 103 (1972)
  • Compton: 60 (1976)
  • Goetghebeur: 269 (1980)
  • Forbes: 37 (1987)
  • Gordon-Gray: 23 (1995)
• Platylepis Kunth
  • Kunth: 269 (1837), not of A.Rich.

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 20, ± cosmopolitan in warm climates
• Southern Africa: Species 2: Ascolepis pusilla Ridley, annual, in Namibia and A. capensis (Kunth) Ridley, perennial, in marshes in Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and Eastern Cape