Description:

• Perennial, tufted
• Leaf blade linear, expanded or folded, sometimes setaceous; ligule a hyaline or scarious, unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence a narrow panicle, contracted or open, erect or nodding; spikelets solitary, pedicelled
• Spikelet large, 7-30 mm long, laterally compressed, disarticulating above glumes and between florets; glumes ± equal or unequal, usually shorter than spikelet, hyaline or subhyaline, acute or acuminate or shortly awned, ± keeled; lower glume 1-3-nerved; upper glume 3(-7)-nerved
• Florets 2-6, bisexual; uppermost floret male, sterile or reduced; rachilla hairy, rarely glabrous, sometimes produced into a short bristle beyond uppermost floret; lemma firmer than glumes, firmly membranous to leathery with scarious or hyaline tips, glabrous, rounded on back, acute or acuminate, 5-11-nerved, 2-lobed (rarely 4-lobed), lobes awnless or awned; central awn from upper part of back between lobes, awn longer than body of lemma, geniculate and twisted, or slightly so; callus hairy; palea shorter than lemma, 2-keeled, ciliate
• Lodicules 2, large, hyaline
• Stamens 3
• Ovary hairy from above middle or at apex only; styles distinct, short, plumose
• x = 7 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Helictotrichon Besser
  • Besser: 526 ['326'] (1827)
  • Stapf: 472 (1899) under Avenastrum Jess.
  • Stent: 284 (1924) under Avenastrum Jess.
  • Schweickerdt: 185 (1937)
  • Phillips: 118 (1951)
  • Chippindall: 76 (1955)
  • Clayton: 86 (1970)
  • Sevenster & Veldkamp: 329 (1983)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 123 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 175 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 446 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, mainly temperate Eurasia, but extending across the tropical mountains to temperate regions throughout the world
• Southern Africa: Species ± 12, northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape