Annual or perennial. Leaf-blades narrowly linear; ligule reduced to a hairy rim. Inflorescence of solitary, paired or digitate slender 1-sided spikes. Spikelets 1-flowered, with or without an additional vestigial floret; glumes unequal, lanceolate, membranous, 1-nerved, keeled, acute, mucronate or short-awned; fertile lemma shorter than the glumes, ovate-elliptic, laterally compressed and keeled, membranous, at length chartaceous or cartilaginous, ciliate on the nerves, minutely 2-toothed, with a fine long flexuous awn from between the teeth. Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid to obovoid, rounded or flattened on the back.

A genus of 2 species in tropical Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India and Pakistan; represented in Pakistan by 1 species.

Lower Taxon

• Schoenefeldia gracilis Kunth

Related Synonym(s):

• Chloris myosuroides Hook.f. = Schoenefeldia gracilis Kunth
• Chloris pallida (Edgew.) Hook.f. = Schoenefeldia gracilis Kunth
• Schoenefeldia pallida Edgew = Schoenefeldia gracilis Kunth