Description: Creeping or prostrate perennials or tufted erect annuals.
Inflorescence spike-like, narrow, terminal and also often lateral from the upper leaves, with several short racemes partially sunken in hollows on one side of a broad, thick, almost fleshy axis. Spikelets falling entire from the rudimentary pedicels, solitary or 2–5 (rarely more) and abaxial on the rachis of very short spike-like racemes; florets 2, the lower male or sterile, the upper bisexual. Stamens 3. Styles free or almost so, very slender; stigmas long, slender.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 7 species, mainly along coastlines of tropical and subtropical seas. Australia: 2 species (1 species native, 1 species naturalized), all States except N.T.
Derivation: from the Greek for ‘narrow’ and ‘trench’. The introduced forms of S. secundatum are sterile triploids and reproduce vegetatively; they are extensively planted for lawns and seem to have completely replaced the native diploid form.
Text by Jacobs, S.W.L., Whalley, R.D.B. & Wheeler, D.J.B.
Taxon concept: Grasses of New South Wales, Fourth Edition (2008).
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