Sp. Pl. 1045 (1753); Gram. Afr. Trop. 1: 298 (1962); Gen. Gram.:349 (1986).
- Type-species: Andropogon distachyos L.
Description:
* Annual or rhizomatous or caespitose perennial. Culms herbaceous and solid, often robust, erect or decumbent. Leaves narrow to broad linear, herbaceous; ligule a unfringed to fringed membrane.
* Inflorescence a simple or compound spathate panicle with branches tipped by a single raceme or composed of terminal and axillary racemes. Racemes paired (nearly always), or clustered, rarely single with few to many paires of spikelets; the raceme bases terete, disarticulating at the joints; internodes without a basal callus-knob. Spikelets paired, sessile and pedicellate, consistently in ‘long-and-short’ combinations; pedicels free from the rhachis.
* Sessile spikelets hermaphrodite, with short blunt hairy callus. Glumes awned or awnless; lower glume two-keeled, flattened to sulcate on the back; upper glume 1-3 nerved, 1-keeled. Lemmas hyaline; lower lemma epaleate; upper lemma incised (usually bifid) and awned from the sinus; awn geniculate, as long as the body of the lemma to much longer; palea hyaline. Pedicelled spikelets male-only, or sterile, sometimes reduced to their pedicels. Stamens 1-3; stigmas 2,
Pantropical and subtropical genus with about 100 species. One of the dominant genera of the african savannas, commonly adventif. Several species adapted to the high mountains. Some species are important fodder species.
From the Greek aner (andr-, man) and pogon (beard), alluding to villous pedicels of sterile and male-only spikelets.