Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 11: 404 (1889)- Type: Marloth1039b, Botswana (B).
Poa squarrosa Roem. & Schult., Syst. Veg. 2: 553 (1817).- Type: Lichtenstein 66, South Afric (holo- B);
Pogonarthria squarrosa (Roemer & Schultes) Pilger, Notizbl. Königl. Bot. Gart. Berl. 5: 149 (1910).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 397 (1972); Gram. Cameroun: 145, fig. 30 (1972); Poac. CI: 154, fig. (1995); Fl. Ethiopia & Eritrea 7: 130, fig (1995); Fl Zambesiaca 10,2: 150, fig (1999); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 143 (2015).
Description:
* Tufted perennial with papery basal sheaths, often in dense clumps, 0.3-1.5 m high. Culms erect, not branched, with up to 6 nodes, glabrous. Leaves 5-45 cm long and 2-5 mm broad, often convolute near the extended tip; sheaths glabrous; ligule a line of hairs, 0.5 mm long.
* Inflorescence linear-oblong to pyramidal, 11-30 cm long and 1-4 cm wide with racemes curved and divergent along a central axis. Racemes 1-6 cm long; rhachis dense and shortly hairy, often falcately curved, tardily deciduous. The spikelets are juvenile at emergence, completing the development later in the exserted inflorescence.
* Spikelets elliptical, 4-12-flowered, 3.5-8 mm long, reddish brown, in series, disarticulating between the florets. Glumes lanceolate, dark reddish-brown, scabrid especially on the keels, the lower 1.0-1.7 mm long; the upper 1.5-2.5 mm long. Lemmas 2-3 mm long, lanceolate, scabrid and acuminate; paleas persistent. Grain elliptisoid, 0.5-0.7 mm long.
Note: Very variable in vigour and especially in the facies of the inflorescence.
Distribution West Africa: Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan (Jebel Marra).
Distribution world-wide: Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea, E and southern Africa.