Description:

• Perennial, tufted, usually aromatic
• Leaf blade filiform to broadly linear, flat or folded; ligule an unfringed or fringed membrane
• Inflorescence of paired, short racemes ± enclosed by a spatheole, these crowded into a leafy, false panicle which is often large and complex; raceme bases subequal, flattened, spreading or deflexed; spikelets paired, not secund, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled, each pair usually differing in sex and ± in shape (heterogamous) except those of lowest pair of lower or both racemes, which are homogamous; internodes and pedicels linear
• Sessile spikelet variously compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal in size, dissimilar in form and texture, ± chartaceous, usually 1-5-nerved; lower glume almost flat or slightly depressed or narrowly grooved on back, 2-keeled, keels usually lateral, with margins sharply inflexed at least from middle upwards, keels winged or wingless; upper glume ± boat-shaped, keeled upwards
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, hyaline, awnless, 1-nerved; upper floret of homogamous pair usually male, rarely sterile, bisexual in heterogamous pair; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, glabrous, rarely entire, incised, 2-lobed, awned from between lobes; awn geniculate, glabrous; callus obtuse, hairy, inserted in concave or cupular top of internode; palea 0
• Lodicules 2, minute, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary subglobose, glabrous; styles plumose above
• Caryopsis oblong, subterete to plano-convex

• Pedicelled spikelet never depressed on back, only lower lemma present, male or sterile, rarely suppressed, awnless
• x = 5, 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cymbopogon Spreng.
  • Sprengel: 14 (1815)
  • Stapf: 335 (1898) under Andropogon L.
  • Stent: 247 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 505 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 759 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 351 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 94 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 278 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 40, tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia, Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 6, widespread