Description:

• Perennial, tufted, sometimes shortly rhizomatous
• Leaf blade linear, tapering to a sharp point; expanded; ligule an unfringed membrane
• Inflorescence of short, solitary spike-like racemes partly enclosed by a spathe and spatheole, these loosely gathered into an open false panicle; spatheoles on slender, filiform branches that are mostly in pairs or groups of three from upper nodes of culm; spatheole narrowly boat-shaped, reddish brown, acuminate, longer than enclosed raceme; spikelets paired, in long-short combination: one sessile, the other pedicelled
• Sessile spikelet 3.5-4.0 mm long, dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, dissimilar; lower glume lanceolate, flat with rounded sides, hairy, not grooved or 2-keeled, usually winged on upper portion; upper glume thinner in texture, boat-shaped, sometimes winged on upper portion of keel, awned from entire or minutely 2-lobed apex; awn fine, straight
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a lemma, hyaline, hairy, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, cartilaginous with a hyaline base and margins, glabrous, deeply 2-lobed, awned from between lobes; awn delicate, much longer than body of lemma, geniculate, twisted, column glabrous; callus short, obtuse, applied obliquely to apex of internode; palea 0
• Lodicules 2, cuneiform, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; stigmas plumose
• Caryopsis oblong, slightly dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet broadly lanceolate, resembling sessile spikelet but slightly longer and wider, male, awnless; callus linear
• x = 5, 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Monocymbium Stapf
  • Stapf: 386 (1919)
  • Stapf: 337 (1898) under Andropogon L.
  • Stent: 252 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 515 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 823 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 358 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 222 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 622 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 4, tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Monocymbium ceresiiforme (Nees) Stapf, N Namibia, northern provinces of South Africa to Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and N Eastern Cape