Annuario Reale Ist Bot. Roma 8: 368 (publ. 1908).- Type: Pappi 1675, 1961, 1245, Eritrea, Halai and Mt Mamahot. (syn- FT).
Regional litterature: FTEA: 231 (1974); Fl. Ethiopia & Eritrea 7: 117, fig. 48 (1995); Fl. Zambesiaca 10,4: 182 (2002); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 130 (2015).
Description:
* Loosely caespitose annual or short-lived perennial of up to 35 cm high. Culms slender, wiry, erect or ascending from a straggling, decumbent base. Leaves flat, 1.5-3.5 mm wide, sparsely to densely pilose, acute; ligule a fringe of hairs.
* Inflorescence a stiff panicle, either open with spreading branches or linear with the branches appressed to the axis. Branches few-spiculate, often simply racemose, the spikelets borne on stout pedicels 0.5-2 mm long.
* Spikelets ovate, dark grey, 4-8.5 mm longand 1,5-2 mm wide, 8-36-flowered with the florets tightly imbricate, disarticulating from below, the paleas persistent on the tough rhachilla. Glumes boat-shaped, 1-1.3 mm long. Lemmas ovate, 1.3-1.8 mm long, plump, cartilaginous, acute; palea-keels scaberulous. Anthers 2, 0.3-0.7 mm long. Caryopsis ellipsoid to suborbicular, 0.5 mm long, lightly reticulate.
Distribution West Africa: South Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Ethiopia, Uganda, DRC and Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Yemen, Sri Lanka.