Themeda Forssk., Fl. Aegypt.-Arab. 178. 1775. Blatter & McCann, Bombay Grasses 114. 1935; Bor, Fl. Assam 5:404. 1940; Sultan & Stewart, Grasses W. Pak. 1: 124. 1958; Bor, Grasses Burma Ceyl. Ind. Pak. 248. 1960; Bor in Rech. f., Fl. Iran. 70: 546. 1970.
Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades linear; ligule very short, membranous. Inflorescence composed of solitary racemes embraced by sheathing spatheoles, these single or in little bunches on flexuous peduncles, and gathered into a leafy false panicle; raceme comprising 2 homogamous paires of spikelets forming a sort of involucre, and 1-4 sessile spikelets with their pedicelled attendants, the sessile spikelets separately deciduous; internodes linear. Homogamous spikelets all sessile, persistent. Sessile spikelet 2-flowered, falling entire, terete; callus obtuse to pung¬ent; lower glume coriaceous, rarely grooved, obtuse; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper floret bisexual, the lemma stipitiform and passing directly into a puberulous or pubescent awn, or hyaline and awnless; palea small or absent; caryopsis lanceolate, channelled on one side. Pedicelled spikelet male or barren, narrowly lanceolate, awnless, with a long slender callus as long as or longer than the true pedicel (this often reduced to a short stump).
A genus of 19 species in tropical and subtropical regions of the Old World 1 species occurs in Pakistan.
Themeda quadrivalvis (Linn.) O. Ktze. is an annual species in which the involucral spikelets are inserted at the same level, and the sessile spikelets awned. Bor (in Fl. Iran. 70: 547) stated that it occured in Pakistan, but this cannot be substantiated.
