Melanocenchris Nees in Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 1:94. 1841. Sultan & Stewart, Grasses W. Pak. 2: 241. 1959; Bor, Grasses Burma Ceyl. Ind. Pak. 472. 1960; Bor in Towns., Guest & Al-Rawi, Fl. Iraq 9:456. 1968; Bor in Rech. f., Fl. Iran. 70: 447.1970.
Annual or perennial grasses with flat or convolute leaf-blades. Spikelets in shortly peduncled, turbinate heads, secund and distant upon a tough flexuous rhachis; heads falling entire, formed of 5-8 spikelets of which 2 are fertile, the rest male or sterile, the latter reduced to lemmas only; fertile spikelets 2-3-flowered, the lowest floret fertile, the upper sterile or one male the other sterile; lower glume linear, 1-nerved with the nerve produced as a scabrid awn, hairy on the back and at the base of the awn; upper glume 3-nerved with a broad hyaline wing on each side, the midnerve produced as a scabrid awn, hairy on the nerves and at the base of the awn, the wings sparsely covered with short clavate hairs; lowest lemma broad, ovate, smooth or covered on the back with short clavate hairs, 3-nerved, the apex narrow, cuspidate or 3-lobed, the lobes aristate; palea broadly elliptic, 2-cuspidate, 2-keeled, hairy on the back with short clavate hairs; upper sterile florets reduced to lemmas. Caryopsis obovate-ellipsoid, somewhat depressed on the back.
A genus of 3 species from northeast tropical Africa to India and Sri Lanka; represented in Pakistan by 2 species.
