Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades flat or rolled; ligule a short membrane or a line of hairs. Inflorescence a single raceme, these terminal or sometimes axillary and gathered into a spatheate false panicle; racemes flexuous, dorsally flattened; internodes subclavate, not crateriform. Sessile spikelet lanceolate to narrowly ovate; callus often large, applied obliquely to the summit of the internode; lower glume subcoriaceous to herbaceous, broadly convex, smooth (or sometimes toothed on the keels), laterally 2–keeled, the keels ciliately fringed and often with an oil streak on the inner side, mostly cuspidate to a bifid tip; upper glume awnless; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma entire or awnless. Caryopsis ellipsoid, dorsally compressed. Pedicelled spikelet well developed, muticous or aristulate.

A genus of 14 species in tropical Africa and America; 1 species in Australia; 1 species in Pakistan and Southwest Asia.

The name taken from Kunth’s manuscript, was originally spelt Elyonurus, It was evidently miscopied, for Kunth himself used the etymologically correct form Elionurus, meaning a dormouse’s tail.

Lower Taxon

• Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.

Related Synonym(s):

• Andropogon elegantissimus Steud. = Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.
• Andropogon elegantissimus var. arabicus Steud. = Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.
• Elionurus royleanus var. albiflorus Terr. = Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.
• Elionurus royleanus var. insularis Terr = Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.
• Elionurus royleanus var. niveus Chiov. = Elionurus royleanus Nees ex A. Rich.