Description: Coarse, tufted, perennials with stout rhizomes.
Leaves with lower sheath compressed, flabellate-imbricate; ligule a rim of hairs.
Inflorescence an erect panicle; racemes whorled, pedunculate, usually simple, 3–many-jointed.
Spikelets paired, each pair subsimilar but differing in sex, 1 sessile the other pedicellate; spikelet pairs falling with rachis joint. Florets 2, the lower a sterile lemma, the upper bisexual in the sessile and male or sterile in the pedicellate spikelets. Sessile spikelets awned; lower glume with a rounded back, usually muticous; upper glume keeled upwards with broad ciliate margins, mucronate to aristulate; lower lemma 2-nerved; upper lemma toothed or entire, muticous or mucronulate or awned from the sinus; palea small. Pedicellate spikelet dorsally compressed, lower glume 7-nerved and the upper 3-nerved; lemmas muticous,
Distribution and occurrence: World: 10 species, tropical regions. Australia: 4 species (native), Qld, N.S.W., N.T.
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs & C. A. Wall
Taxon concept:
Taxa not yet included in identification key
Chrysopogon filipes
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Racemes usually 2-jointed (sometimes 1- or 3-jointed); pedicellate spikelets usually awnless; leaf sheaths strongly keeled, persistent | Chrysopogon sylvaticus |
| Racemes usually 1-jointed (rarely 2-jointed); pedicellate spikelets usually short-awned; leaf sheaths disintegrating into fibres, not keeled | Chrysopogon fallax |
|
