Mém. Soc. Bot. Fr. 2,8: 99 (1908).- Type: ?Chevalier 18667, Guinea (type- P).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 502 (1972); Gram. Togo: 333 (1983); Poac. CI: 640, fig. (1985); Fl. Guinée: 480 (2009); Pl. Burkina Faso: 118 (2012).
Description: Erect annual grass, small tufts or a single culm, up to 1.2 m. Culms slender, weak and easily crushed. Leaves narrowly linear, flat to rolled, 15-30 cm long, 2-3 mm wide, glabrous to hairy, with distinctly scabrid nerves and sharp margins white midrib; apex attenuate, filiform; ligule an eciliate membrane of 3 mm long; sheath glabrous to hairy, sometimes with auricles and lower ones sometimes purplish. Roots developed.
* Inflorescence a single raceme of 10-15 cm long; rachis fragile at the nodes, semi terete; internodes linear, 4-5 mm long with an oblique tip. Pedicels linear.
* Sessile spikelets oblong, 5-7 mm long; callus oblong, white pubescent, base obtuse, inserted. Lower glume elliptic, coriaceous, smooth, acute, laterally keeled with tubercles; upper glume ovate, chartaceous, 1-keeled. Lemmas lanceolate, hyaline, ciliate on the margins. Pedicelled spikelets elliptic, 1-7 mm long, shorter than fertile, persistent. Glumes coriaceous; lower glume with a sickle-shaped 2.5-6 cm long awn, spiraling from the base. Caryopsis oblong, 3 mm long.
Distribution West Africa and world-wide: Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria.