FTA 9: 76 (1917).- Type: Büchner 36, Angola (holo- B; fragm.L ).
Rottboellia caudata Hack. in DC., Monogr. Phan. 6: 298 1889);
Rottboellia afzelii Hack., in DC, Monogr. Phan. 6:300 (1889);
Rottboellia kerstingii Pilg., Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 34: 126 (1904).- Type: Kersting, Togo;
Chasmopodium afzelii (Hack.) Stapf, FTA 9: 77 (1917).
Regional litterature: FI. Agr. Congo Belge 1: 68 (1929); Fl. Nigeria: 88 (1970); FWTA: 509 (1972); Ghana grasses: 116, fig. 18 (1977); Gram. Cameroun: 533, fig. 117 (1992) ; Poac. CI: 666, fig. (1985); Poac. Niger : 654, fig. (1999); Fl. Bénin: 191 (2006); Fl. Guinea Bissau: 134 (2008); Fl. Guinée: 452 (2009); Pl. Burkina Faso: 75 (2012) ; Fl. Chad (2013); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 122 (2015)
Description:
* Annual, sometimes perennial light green bunchgrass with a basal diameter of the tuft to 90 cm or more and up to 5 m high. Culms sometimes extremely large, coarse, woody cane-like, somewhat compressed and deeply grooved opposite the branches, often strongly prop-rooted. Leaves horizontal or ascending, long linear, 0.4-1.2 m long and 2-4 cm wide, flat and glabrous with a conspicuous white midrib, with scabrid to sharply serrate margins; base gradually narrowing to a long grooved false petiole; ligule a short hairy, pale membrane; sheath glabrous above and the basal ones and lower culms painfully prickly-hairy. The annual form is smaller and more delicate.
* Inflorescence axillary and terminally on the upper culms, branching to numerous large solitary terete terminal racemes. Racemes fragile, 7-10 cm long and 4-7 mm large, with linear internodes, thickened towards the tip of 4-6 mm long, the terminal spikelet reduced into a long tail of 1.5-2.5 cm. The sessile spikelets arranged at one side, the pedicelled ones at the other side of the rhachis.
* Sessile and pedicelled spikelets alike, the sessile ovate, 5-8 mm long with a barbed callus. Lower glume coriaceous, glossy, granular surface, asymmetrically winged and with a slightly bifid tip; upper glume coriaceous, slightly shorter, boat-shaped around pedicel and internode, with sharp keel and flattened tip. Lemmas and paleas hyaline. Seed light brown, winkled, 5 mm long. The pedicelled spikelets laterally winged.