General: Perennial grass from elongate, scaly rhizomes; stems erect, 10-30 cm tall, the aerial stems decumbent and freely rooting.
Leaves: Sheaths open, the collars and throats long-hairy; blades mostly 1.5-3 (5) mm wide, flat, short; ligules with membranous base scarcely 0.3 mm long, fringed with straight hairs 2-4 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence of 4 or 5 digitate, terminal spikes up to 5 cm long; spikelets unstalked, borne in 2 rows on one side of the rachis, articulating above the glumes, usually 1-flowered; glumes about equal, narrow, 1-nerved; lemmas about 2 mm long, longer than the glumes, strongly compressed; paleas nearly as long as the lemmas, 2-nerved; rachillas prolonged and bristlelike, very occasionally bearing rudimentary second flowers; lodicules 2, more or less wedge-shaped, about 0.3 mm long.
If more than one illustration is
available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two
subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below.
Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.
Synonyms and Alternate Names: Capriola dactylon (L.) Kuntze Cynodon aristiglumis Caro & Sßnchez Cynodon incompletus auct. non Nees [misapplied] Panicum dactylon L.
