Pflanzenw. Ost-Afrikas C: 114 (1895).- Type: Holst 269, Tanzania (holo- B).
Regional litterature: FTEA: 201 (1974); Fl. Ethiopia & Eritrea 7: 114, fig (1995); Fl. Zambesiaca 10,2: 64 (1999); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 130 (2015).
Description:
* Densely tufted perennial without rhizomes and stolons, up to 90 cm high. Culms erect, unbranched, glabrous at nodes, eglandular. Basal sheaths glabrous, chartaceous, terete, persistant. Leaves linear, 6-30 cm long and 1-2 mm wide, involute or rarely flat, loosely pilose; ligule a line of hairs.
* Inflorescence a narrowly ovate open panicle of 5-25 cm long; branches and branchlets stiff and straight, not whorled, terminating in a slender bristle or abortive spikelet, thinly pilose in the axils. Spikelets evenly distributed, on filiform pedicels of 5-8 mm long
* Spikelets 5-7(-20)-flowered, ovate to oblong, 2.5-4.5 mm long, greyish; rhachilla fragile, disarticulating below each floret. Glumes lanceolate, slightly shorter than the lowest lemmas. Lemmas narrowly ovate, 1.5-2 mm long, pilose near the margins; palea keels thinly and irregularly ciliate with hairs 0.2-0.5 mm long. Anthers 3, 0.5-1 mm long. Caryopsis ellipsoid, 0.6 mm long.
Distribution West Africa: South Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Ethiopia, Uganda, DRC, Congo and C, E and southern Africa.