Pl. Nov. Min. Not.: 39 (1842).- Type: Canary Isl. (unknown).
Regional litterature: FTA 9: 433 (1919); FTEA: 647 (1982); Fl. Ethiopia & Eritrea 7: 253 (1995)Pl. Mauritanie: 301 (1998); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 126 (2015).
Description:
* Densely caespitose perennial without rhizomes, the basal sheaths silky pubescent to tomentose 0.15-1 m high. Culms erect, hard, often bulbous at the base, mostly unbranched; nodes dark and glabrous. Leaves linear, 3-30 cm long and 2-5 mm. wide, velvety or glabrescent.
* Inflorescence composed of 4-12(-25) racemes, digitate or spread on a short axis up to 10 cm long. Racemes 3-15 cm. long, the spikelets paired, loosely overlapping on a triquetrous rhachis or sometimes on secondary branchlets, the longer pedicels often filiform.
* Spikelets narrowly elliptic, 2-3 mm. long. Lower glume a small ovate scale 0.1-0.4 mm long; upper glume 2/3 to almost as long as the spikelet, 3-nerved, pubescent to villous. Lower lemma as long as the spikelet, 7-nerved,appressed pilose to woolly villous with white hairs (rarely merely pubescent); upper lemma ellipsoid, greyish brown to light brown.
Distribution West Africa: Cape Verde, Mauritania, perhaps South Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Morocco. Algeria, Tunesia, Ethiopia and NE and E Africa, W and southern Asia.