Mary E. Barkworth

Plants usually perennial; cespitose. Culms 15-300 cm. Leavesaromatic, smelling of lemon oil or citronella; sheaths open, not strongly keeled except near the summit; ligules membranous; bladesusually glabrous or mostly so, with long filiform apices. Inflorescencesterminal and axillary, false panicles; peduncles often enclosed in the subtending leaf sheaths at maturity, with 2 rames; rames with 4-7 heterogamous spikelet pairs, axes slender, without a median groove, lower rame of each pair with 1 homogamous spikelet pair at the base, its pedicel swollen and more or less fused to the adjacent internodes, upper rames with short, sterile, flattened bases that are usually deflexed at maturity, without homogamous spikelet units. Heterogamous spikelet units: sessile spikelets dorsally compressed, with 2 florets; lower glumes chartaceous, concave or flat, 2-keeled, with or without intercostal veins, often streaked with oil glands; upper florets with a short, glabrous awn (rarely unawned); pedicels linear, free from the rame axes; pedicellate spikelets well-developed. x = 10. Name from the Greek kymbe, boat, and pogon, beard, referring to the boat-shaped leaf sheaths subtending the usually hairy rames (Clifford 1996).

T.A. Cope (1995) . Cymbopogon. Flora of Somalia 4: 261-263

Plants usually robust perennials, rarely annuals. Leaves usually aromatice; ligules membranous or scarious. Inflorescences composed of pairs of short rames [spikelike branches composed of sessile-pedicellate pairs of spikelets) on a common peduncle and more or less enclosed by a boat-shaped spatheole, these units crowded into a laefy, paniculate structure; rames with short, flattened bases, often deflexed, bearing a homogamous spikelet-pair at the base, its pedicel more or less fused to the linear internodes. Sessile spikelets dorsally compressed; calluses obtuse, inserted in to the concave top of the internode below; lower glumes more or less charteaceous, concave, 2-keeled, the keels usually lateral and often winged near the top, with or without veins between the keels; lower florets sterile, reduced to hyaline lemmas; upper lemmas hyaline or stipelike, awned or not. Pedicellate spikelets male or sterile, about as long as the sessile spikelets, unawned. Cayopses oblong, subterete to plano-convex.

Cymbopogon is a genus of more than 50 species. There are 6 species in Somaliland and Somalia.

Key to the species of Cymbopogon in Somaliand and Somalia.

Global distribution of Cymbopogon.

Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.