Dactyloctenium Willd.

Dactyloctenium Willd. Annual or perennial; solitary or caespitose; stoloniferous or non-stoloniferous; habit suffruticose or non-suffruticose; herbs. Leaves herbaceous, flaccid; if rigid, apices pungent; strongly distichous or not; glaucous or not. Ligule membranous, ciliate, or absent. Inflorescences digitate or sub-digitate; open or compact; usually single-whorled, rarely double-whorled; unbranched; branches angled and channeled, secund, culminating in a naked extension beyond the axis. Spikelets uniseriately disposed on the underside of the branches; intermittent tufts of hairs prominent or weakly discernible; florets 1–12 per spikelet, the distal floret reduced, lacking a bare rachilla extension. Glumes membranous, 1-nerved, shorter or longer than the florets; lower glume muticous or mucronate; upper glume with a bent or flexuous arista—if subapical, glume bifid; if apical, glume entire. Callus of the florets insignificant and glabrous. Lemma 3-nerved; apex acute, mucronate, acuminate or acuminate-aristate; slightly bifid; when aristate, the arista slightly flexuous; dorsally gibbous or not. Palea 2-nerved; shorter than the lemma; apex acute or bidentate; slightly or broadly winged along the scabrid keels. Stamens 3, 0.4–2.3 mm long. Caryopses ovate, ovate-elliptic, oblong, or somewhat squarish; pericarp free, disintegrating upon maturity and shed in fragments; caryopses greyish, sand-coloured, orangish, brownish, or maroonish; surface texture ranging from transversely rugose to granular, intermediate forms present in depauperate or hybridised specimens. Chromosome: 2n=20, 36, 40, 48 (Kellogg 2015). Global taxa: 13 species globally. Global Distribution: From South Africa to North India and Peninsular India, West Indian Ocean Islands (including Madagascar), Australia. Dactyloctenium aegyptium, a pantropical weed (Kellogg 2015).