Description:

• Annual, coarse, sometimes with stilt-roots
• Leaf blade linear, rolled, often narrowed to a midrib and falsely petiolate; sheaths and blades hispid with tubercle-based hairs; ligule an unfringed membrane, scarious
• Inflorescence a large terminal panicle, ± contracted, primary branches bearing spikelets at regular intervals; spikelets solitary, pedicels linear
• Spikelet usually light brown to black, dorsiventrally compressed, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, similar, leathery, hairy, with inrolled margins, awnless; lower glume broadly rounded, not 2-keeled
• Florets 2; lower floret reduced to a lemma, hyaline, hairy, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma less firm than glumes, hyaline, hairy, 3-nerved, incised, 2-lobed, awned from between lobes, awn geniculate, twisted, glabrous, longer than body of lemma; callus obtuse; palea minute, ciliate
• Lodicules 2, broadly cuneate, ciliate, fleshy
• Stamens 3
• Ovary subovoid, glabrous; styles plumose above
• Caryopsis oblong
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Cleistachne Benth.
  • Bentham: t. 1379 (1882)
  • Stent: 253 (1924)
  • Chippindall: 468 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 734 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 341 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 86 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 247 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1: Cleistachne sorghoides Benth, tropical Africa and India
• Southern Africa: Mpumalanga