Description:

• Perennial, tufted, rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear or tapering from a cordate base; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence of paired, spike-like racemes, shortly peduncled, terminal or in a spatheate false panicle, racemes not deflexed, bases subterete, with 1-many homogamous spikelets in lower part, remaining spikelets heterogamous; internodes and pedicels linear; spikelets paired, in long-short combinations: one sessile, one pedicellate
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, subcoriaceous, awnless, dissimilar, 2-7-nerved; lower glume usually with a deep groove on back, 2-keeled, keels dorsal and ± rounded; upper glume not 2-keeled
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, hyaline, hairy, 2-nerved; upper floret bisexual (except at base of raceme), glabrous; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, 2-lobed, awned from sinus; awn stout, geniculate, column hairy; callus long, acute to pungent, densely tomentose, deeply inserted into hollow top of internode; palea short, narrow, hyaline, 2-nerved
• Lodicules 2, cuneate
• Stamens 3
• Ovary glabrous; styles terminal, plumose
• Caryopsis lanceolate to oblanceolate

• Pedicelled spikelet larger than sessile spikelet, male, awned or awnless
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Diheteropogon (Hack.) Stapf
  • Stapf: t. 3093 (1922)
  • Chippindall: 518 (1955)
  • Anderson: 7 (1966) under Andropogon L.
  • Clayton: 73 (1966)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 783 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 353 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 114 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 330 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 5, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, northern provinces of South Africa, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, rarely in Namibia