Description:

• Perennial, tufted, rhizomatous, basal sheaths fibrous
• Leaf blade expanded or rolled, almost setaceous; ligule a fringed membrane
• Inflorescence 2-8 slender, spike-like racemes, digitate or subdigitate; spikelets solitary, subsessile or shortly pedicelled, somewhat distant on rachis
• Spikelet laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes and between florets; glumes ± equal or unequal, shorter to as long as spikelet, linear, similar, membranous, glabrous, 1-nerved, keeled, awnless
• Florets 2-many, dissimilar; lower florets 1-3 bisexual or second floret sometimes male only; upper florets 1-5 sterile, reduced to awns, forming a tuft which remains attached to upper fertile floret; bisexual lemma linear, less firm than glumes, thinly membranous, finely hairy, 3-nerved, dorsally keeled, shortly 2-lobed, central awn from between lobes; awn slender, straight, longer than body of lemma; callus short, pointed, minutely hairy; palea slightly shorter than lemma, linear, acute, deeply concave on back, 2-keeled, subhyaline
• Lodicules 2, minute, hyaline, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles distinct, short, loosely plumose above
• Caryopsis fusiform

Nomenclature:

• Lophacme Stapf
  • Stapf: 316 (1898)
  • Stapf: 647 (1900)
  • Stent: 292 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 127 (1955)
  • Pilger: 32 (1956)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 213 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 203 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 560 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, south tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Lophacme digitata Stapf, northern provinces of South Africa to KwaZulu-Natal