Description:

• Plants caespitose or rhizomatous
• Culms widely spaced, erect, simple or branching, terete or compressed, often with shorter sterile stems
• Leaf sheaths closely convolute or sometimes loose in their upper parts, persistent or caducous
• Male inflorescence usually similar or identical to female; perianth segments woody; florets often somewhat smaller than female
• Male spikelets many, in panicled cymes, or fewer in spicate cymes, or solitary and terminal, with many florets; perianth compressed; segments 6, outer lateral ones usually boat-shaped, villous on midrib or glabrous; ovary rudimentary
• Female inflorescence generally of large numbers of compact spikelets clustered at several fertile nodes, these often obscured by large persistent spathes
• Female spikelets poorly organised, with 1-many florets; bracts usually shorter than florets; perianth subtrigonous; perianth segments osseous, often black, outer lateral ones not keeled; staminodes minute or 0; ovary usually trigonous, rarely compressed, 1-locular; styles 2 or 3, short, plumose, free or connate below middle
• Fruit a trigonous nutlet

Nomenclature:

• Elegia L.
  • Linnaeus: 162 (1767)
  • Masters: 104 (1897)
  • Pillans: 313 (1928)
  • Linder: 418 (1985)
  • Linder: 245 (1991)
• Lamprocaulos Mast.
  • Masters: 114 (1897)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species ± 35, Northern Cape (Namaqualand), Western and Eastern Cape