Annuals or perennials. Ligule a short ciliolate membrane; leaf laminas linear. Inflorescence a solitary raceme, exserted from or enclosed by a narrow spatheole and gathered into a scanty or copious false panicle; raceme loose, with few spikelets (sometimes only 1; internodes and pedicels long and slender; sessile spikelet slightly dorsally compressed to subterete; callus usually pungent, applied obliquely to the apex of the internode with its tip free; inferior glume usually not grooved on the back (grooved in A. scyphofera); superior glume usually awned; inferior floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; superior lemma bilobed, passing between the lobes into a glabrous to pubescent awn. Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid to subcylindric. Pedicelled spikelets as long as the sessile, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, usually glabrous, with a narrowly oblong to linear callus, sometimes the spikelet much reduced or quite absent and its pedicel likewise much reduced.
Worldwide: Species 14, occurring from Senegal to Mozambique.
Zambia: 1 taxon. |
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