Description:

• Perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade expanded or rolled, frequently slightly auricled; ligule a delicate, hyaline, unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence an erect terminal raceme or a narrow panicle, often secund; spikelets solitary, on short pedicels with thickened tips; pedicels capillary and often nodding
• Spikelet 5-15 mm long, weakly laterally compressed, variously disarticulating; glumes ± equal or unequal, ± equal to spikelet, papery, similar, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, subacuminate, acute or subacute; upper glume 3-7-nerved
• Florets 3-6; lower 2 florets (rarely 1 or 3) bisexual; upper 2 or 3 florets sterile, reduced to lemmas compacted to form a club-shaped body on prolonged rachis, glabrous or hairy; bisexual floret: lemma lanceolate, membranous, 7-9-nerved, rounded on back, hairy with long, silky, silvery hairs on back or only near margins, awnless; callus short, glabrous; palea shorter than lemma, lanceolate or oblanceolate, acute, 2-keeled, ciliate on keels
• Lodicules 2, short, thick, rounded, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles distinct, short, finely plumose
• x = 9 (7) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Melica L.
  • Linnaeus: 66 (1753)
  • Stapf: 684 (1900)
  • Chippindall: 73 (1955)
  • Gibbs Russell & Ellis: 37 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 113 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 209 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 587 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, temperate regions throughout the world except Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, widespread, not recorded from Namibia and Botswana