Pl. Pugill. 2: 15 (1815).- Type: Plukenet, s.l. (holo- BM).
Andropogon schoenanthus Linn., Sp. Pl. 1046 (1753).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 482 (1919); Ghana grasses: 128, fig. 25 (1977); FTEA: 765 (1982); Fl. Sahara: 157 (1977); FTEA: 766 (1982); Fl. Mauritania: 419, 435, fig (1991); Poac. CI: 542, fig. (1995); Fl. Bénin: (2006) ; Pl. Burkina Faso: 78 (2012).
Description:
* Coarse erect aromatic bunchgrass up to 1.3 m and sometimes more. Butt sheaths persistent and investing base of culm. Culms yellow. Leaves 10-35 cm long, 1-4 mm wide, aromatic with a lemon-like scent, linear, flat but drying filiform, glabrous and finely striated with margins and both surfaces scabrid; base narrowed, with a whitened collar; ligule a fairly large translucent or white membrane; sheath glabrous, the basal ones yellow. Roots yellowish.
* Inflorescence paniculate, 5-40 cm long, dense, composed of terminal and axillary racemes, subtended by a pink spatheole 15-28 mm long. Racemes paired, deflexed, 1-3 cm long; rachis fragile, villous on margins; hairs 2-4 mm long; internodes linear; tip cupuliform; bases flattened and sub equal. Pedicels linear, villous with 2-4 mm long hairs; pedicels fused and swollen to internode in lower raceme. Basal spikelets 2 in lower raceme, none in upper raceme.
* Sessile spikelets lanceolate, dorsally compressed, 4-7 mm long; callus pilose, base obtuse. Lower glume linear, chartaceous, keeled laterally, concave. Lemmas hyaline. upper lemma lanceolate with straight to kinked awn from a sinus, 5-9 mm long. Pedicelled spikelet lanceolate, 4-7 mm long; glumes chartaceous, acute, muticous.
Note: Distinction between sspp. not very obvious, much depending on location.
Key to the subspecies:
1. Leaves convolute, filiform, about 1 mm broad and up to 15 cm long; panicle scanty, the raceme pairs borne singly or in clusters of 2-3. ssp. schoenanthus
1'.Leaves flat, up to 3 mm broad, but often convolute or folded in dry specimens, and up to 35 cm long; panicle compound and raceme-pairs aggregated into dense cluster. ssp. proximus
Distribution West Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, CAR, Chad, Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, Libyam Egypt. Ethiopia, and NE Africa, Kenya and the Middle East.