FTA 9: 203 (1919).- Type: Don, Gambia (holo- K).
Andropogon pulchellus Benth. Flor. Nigrit. 571 (1849).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 481 (1972); RI: 227 (1977); Gram. Togo: 306 (1983); Gram. Cameroun: 459 (1992); Fl. Bénin: 240 (1992); Poac. CI: 532, fig. (1995); Fl. Guinea Bissau: 142 (2008); Fl. Guinée: 476 (2009).
Description:
* Creeping and prostrate perennial with long vigorous stolons of 3-12 m long, rooting at the nodes. Culms ascending to 30-60 cm high, hard, nodes dark. Leaves linear, mostly flat and folded towards the tip with an acute canoe-shaped point, stiff, light green, 3-5 cm long and 1.5-2.5 mm wide, glabrous, with smooth margins; base slightly rounded; ligule glabrous membrane of 0.7 mm long; sheath glabrous. Roots hard, wiry and black.
* Inflorescence compound, paniculate, reddish-brown, the flowering branches also prostrate and ascending up to 0.2 m high, with terminal and axillary racemes with long white hairs and partially enclosed in persistent reddish-green spatheoles. Racemes single, 3.5-4 cm long; rachis fragile, plumose on margins, hairs 5-6 mm long; internodes clavate, 6-8 mm long; tip crater form scarious rim. Spikelets appressed, in pairs. Pedicels clavate; 7-10 mm long, with hairs 2- 7 mm long.
* Sessile spikelets lanceolate, dorsally compressed, 6-7 mm long; callus pilose, base obtuse. Lower glume lanceolate, chartaceous, 2-keeled, flat, glabrous, apex 2 -dentate; upper glume lanceolate, membranous. Lower lemma hyaline, 2 -veined, ciliolate on margins. Fertile lemma linear, hyaline, apex entire with straight apical awn 5-6 (- 12) mm long without a column. Pedicelled spikelets well-developed, male, lanceolate, 5-6 mm long.
Distribution West Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast , Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon.
Distribution world-wide: Gabon, Congo, DRC.