Anadelphia

Anadelphia is a genus of plants in the Poaceae family. It is native to the African tropics.

Description

It is an annual or perennial plant; forming tufted tufts if it behaves as a perennial. Culms 20 cm to 2 m tall; herbaceous; may or may not be branched at the bottom. exposed knots; glabrous Leaves present, mostly basal, or not. Upper leaf-blades fully developed. Intravaginal tillers; auriculate (or almost, by virtue of the ligule), or not auriculate. Linear leaf blades; narrow; 0.5–5 mm wide; setaceous (e.g. A. pumila), or not; flat, needle-like; no cross venation; persistent. Membranous ligule (sometimes laterally heavy, margins auriculate, when blade narrows); truncated; about 1 mm in length. Contraligula absent.

They are bisexual, with bisexual spikes; hermaphrodite flowers. It can be a sterile male hermaphrodite or a sterile hermaphrodite. The male and female fertile spikes are mixed in the inflorescence. Spikes mostly heteromorphic; all in heterogamous combinations. Self-pollinated or crossed plants; chasmogamous (the clusters usually long stalked and exserted from the spatheole), or exposed cleistogamous (in A. trepidaria, where a reduced 'cluster' is concealed in the spatheole, cf. Monium).

Cytology

The basic chromosome number of the genus is x = 10, with somatic chromosome numbers of 2n = 20, diploid.

Distribution, ecology, phytogeography

The 13 species in the genus are found in tropical Africa in savannahs, on thin soils.

Paleotropics. African. Sudano-Angolan and West African sandy forests. Sahelo-Sudaniana or sudtropical.

Species

• Anadelphia afzeliana (Rendle) Stapf
• Anadelphia tencta (Stapf) Stapf
• Anadelphia bigeniculata Clayton
• Anadelphia chevalieri Reznik
• Anadelphia funerea (Jacq.-Fél.) Clayton
• Anadelphia hamata Stapf
• Anadelphia leptocoma (Trin.) Pilg.
• Anadelphia liebigiana H. Scholz
• Anadelphia lomaensis (A. Camus) Jacq.-Fél.
• Anadelphia longifolia Stapf
• Anadelphia macrochaeta (Stapf) Clayton
• Anadelphia polychaeta Clayton
• Anadelphia pubiglumis Stapf
• Anadelphia pumila Jacq.-Fél.
• Anadelphia scyphofera Clayton
• Anadelphia tenuifolia Stapf
• Anadelphia trepidaria (Stapf) Stapf
• Anadelphia trichaeta (Reznik) Clayton
• Anadelphia triseta Reznik
• Anadelphia trispiculata Stapf
• Anadelphia virgata Hack.