Description:

• Perennial, decumbent or rambling, rhizomatous, stoloniferous
• Leaf blade linear to linear-lanceolate, usually flat; ligule a short, fringed membrane
• Inflorescence of solitary spike-like racemes in a spatheate, leafy, false panicle, dorsiventrally compressed, tough, arising from subtending sheaths; internodes clavate, usually disarticulating obliquely; spikelets in pairs, secund, in long-short combinations: one sessile, the other pedicelled but appearing sessile owing to pedicel being fused with adjacent internode of rachis, spikelets sunk in a concave hollow on inner surface of rachis, thus inflorescence appears culm-like
• Sessile spikelet dorsiventrally compressed, lanceolate, glabrous, falling with glumes; glumes ± equal, dissimilar, awnless; lower glume obtuse to emarginate, 2-keeled, keels not winged, many-nerved; upper glume obtuse to long-acuminate, membranous
• Florets 2; lower floret sterile, reduced to a hyaline lemma, awnless; upper floret bisexual; lemma lanceolate, less firm than glumes, hyaline, entire, glabrous, awnless; callus obtuse to cuneate, rarely truncate; palea similar to lemma
• Lodicules 2, fleshy, cuneate, glabrous
• Stamens 3
• Ovary ellipsoid, glabrous; styles erect, plumose
• Caryopsis narrowly obovoid, slightly dorsiventrally compressed

• Pedicelled spikelet similar to sessile spikelet, bisexual; callus 0; pedicel flattened, broadly linear, fused to internode
• x = 9, 10 (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Hemarthria R.Br.
  • Brown: 207 (1810)
  • Stapf: 328 (1898) under Rottboellia L.f. subgen. Hemarthria (R.Br.) Hack.
  • Chippindall: 19 (1955)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 851 (1982)
  • Clayton & Renvoize: 363 (1986)
  • Gibbs Russell et al.: 178 (1990)
  • Watson & Dallwitz: 448 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 12, tropical and subtropical regions of Old World, also in America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Hemarthria altissima (Poir.) Stapf & C.E.Hubb., widespread except Namibia