Description:
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Caespitose perennial; culms up to 110 cm high, erect, branched with slender internodes, yellowish with reddish tinge. Leaves glabrous except at the summit of the sheath; basal sheaths laterally compressed and keeled, distichous and shining; ligule a short (c. 1.5 mm) minutely fringed membrane; laminas 15–25 cm × c. 3 mm wide, folded and keeled, smooth on the margins, tapering to a very fine point at the apex. Racemes up to 10 in subdigitate groups, 9–10 cm long, slender, flexuous, sparsely pubescent, exserted from the spatheoles, dark red; peduncles longer than the racemes; internodes and pedicels filiform, ciliate on both margins, the internodes shorter than the sessile spikelets. Sessile spikelet 4.5–5 mm long; inferior glume with a shallow median groove or ± flat, with marginal hairs towards the apex; superior glume concave on the back; superior lemma bifid to the middle; awn geniculate, 9–10 mm long; anthers c. 1.5 mm long, straw-coloured. Pedicelled spikelet male, 3.5–4.5 mm long, shortly mucronate. |
| Literature:
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Cope, T.A. (2002). Poaceae Flora Zambesiaca 10(4) Pages 67 - 68.
Mapaura, A. & Timberlake, J. (eds) (2004). A checklist of Zimbabwean vascular plants Southern African Botanical Diversity Network Report No. 33 Sabonet, Pretoria and Harare Page 99.
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