FTA 9: 325 (1919).- Type: Jardin 277, Guinea (holo P).
Andropogon familiaris Steud., Syn. Pl. Glum. 1: 385 (1854);
Cymbopogon familiaris (Steud.) De Wild., Bull Jard. Bot. Brux. 6: 12 (1919);
Themeda effusa Bal., J. de Bot. 4: 115 (1890).
Regional litterature: FI. Nigeria: 96 (1970); FWTA: 492 (1972); Ghana grasses: 162 (1977); FTEA : 802 (1982) ; Fl. Rwanda: 289 (1988); Gram. Cameroun: 483 (1992); Poac. CI: 590, fig. (1995); Fl. Guinée: 462 (2009); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 133 (2015).
Description: Densely tufted erect perennial bunchgrass, 0.3-2.0 m high with a short rhizome; culms erect, glabrous, weak or robust. Leaves narrowly linear 25-40 cm long and 2-5 mm wide, reddish, flat and glabrous or folded and keeled, with scabrid margins; base narrowed and passing straight into the sheath; ligule an eciliate or ciliate brownish membrane of 1.5-2 mm long; sheath glabrous. Roots fine and dense, fibrous.
* Inflorescence a lax spatheolate panicle with many flowering branches from the upper culm, 30-60 cm long, bearing paired racemes mounted on curved peduncles with spreading yellow hairs and excerted from the narrow spatheole; spatheole linear, 5-7 cm long, brown or reddish; peduncle filiformous, 6-10 cm long, pilose above. Racemes deflexed, 1.5-2.5 cm long, olive-green, purplish, 3-5 yellow-brown awns per pair; rhachis fragile at the nodes, ciliate on margins with white hairs; internodes linear oblique; raceme-bases filiform, unequal, the longer 4-5 mm long, pubescent or fulvous hirsute, hairy in axils. Homogamous spikelets well-developed, one pair in lower raceme, two pairs in upper raceme.
* Sessile spikelets linear or oblong,7-8.5 mm long; callus linear, 2-2.5 mm long, pungent and pubescent with white hairs. Lower glume lanceolate, as long as spikelet, coriaceous, glabrous or pubescent with white hairs, 2 -fid; upper glume linear, coriaceous. Upper lemmabifid, with geniculate awn from the sinus; awn 5-8 cm long with twisted column, fulvous hirtellous with 0.5-1 mm long hairs. Pedicelled spikelets linear or lanceolate, 6-9 mm long; glumes chartaceous, glabrous, acute with 2-12 mm long awn; tooth of pedicel 0.5 mm long. Homogamous spikelets 6-9 mm long, muticous.
Note: Annual status not always easy to judge.
Distribution West Africa: Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, CAR, South Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Gabon, Congo, DRC, Uganda, and C Africa, Tanzania and Angola; introduced in Vietnam.