Rev. Bot. Appliq. 33: 446 (1953).- Type: Jacques-Félix 183, Kindia, Guinée (holo- P).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 481 (1972); Ghana grasses: 226 (1977); Fl. Guinée: 476 (2009).
Description:
* Well branched multi-stemmed perennial bunchgrass of 0.3-0.6 m tall. Culms erect rounded, 1-1.5 mm diam. Leaves 10-15 cm long, 0.5-1 mm wide, borne all the way up the culm, narrowly linear, sometimes flat but usually folded or rolled inward and filiform, sparsely hairy to glabrous with smooth margins; base barely rounded, slightly hairy; ligule a narrow, shortly toothed, white eciliate membrane; sheath hairy and compressed. Roots fine, dark or black.
* Inflorescence compound, scanty or linear, 8-15 cm long, composed of terminal and axillary racemes subtended by a spatheole. Spatheoles linear, 3 cm long; peduncles 3-6 cm long, widened at apex. Racemes cylindrical, distinctly hairy, 1-3.5 cm long; rachis fragile with hairs 3-3.5 mm long; internodes clavate, 3.5 mm long with crater form tip, broadet than the spikelet. Spikelets appressed. Pedicels linear, 3 mm long, ciliate.
* Sessile spikelet lanceolate, dorsally compressed, 3-3.5 mm long; callus obtuse, pilose. Lower glume lanceolate, chartaceous, keeled laterally till the base, pilose and hairy below, bifid; upper glume lanceolate and acuminate. Lemmas hyaline, 5 mm long; upper lemma incised for 0.1-0.3 of length with a geniculate awn 12- 15 mm long; column glabrous, 5-6 mm. Pedicelled spikelets well-developed, lanceolate, dorsally compressed, 3.5-4 mm long; glume with a 2 mm long awn.
Distribution West Africa and world-wide: Guinea, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria.