See references

Plants annual or perennial, not rhizomatous. Culms 4-120 cm long, erect, ascending, or decumbent, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes, unbranched or branched at the base. Leavesusually fewer than 6 per culm, basal and cauline; sheaths  open, smooth or scabridulous; auricles absent; ligules membranous or hyaline, acute to broadly rounded, erose, sometimes ciliate; blades linear, flat to convolute. Inflorescences terminal panicles, contracted to spikelike, dense, coninuous or interrupted below, often bristley; branches flexible, usually some longer than 1 cm; pedicels absent or present and terminating in a stipe; disarticulation at the base of the stipes. Spikelets 1-5 mm long, borne on a stipe, with 1 bisexual floret; stipes scabrous, flaring distally; rachillas not prolonged beyond the base of the floret. Glumes equal, exceeding the floret, lanceolate, papery, scabrous, 1-veine, bases not fused, tips entire, bilobed or emarginate, usually awned from the sinus or, if entire, from the tip, the awns flexuous and glabrous; lemmas 1-3(5)-veined, about 1/2 as long as the glumes, acute to truncate, thinly membranous, shiny, obscurely 5-veined, veins usually shortly excurrent, the central vein often forming an awn; awn uually terminal or subterminal, sometimes arising from near midlength; paleas 1/3 as long as to equaling the lemmas; lodicules 2, oblong-lanceolate to lanceolate; anthers 3; ovaries glabrous; styles separate. Caryopses slightly flattenened, broadly ellipsoid to oblong-ellipsoid; hila 1/-1/6 as long as the caryopses, ovate. 

x = 7.

Name from the Greek poly meaning 'many' and pogon "beard', a reference to the bristly appearance of the inflorescence.

Polypogon is a pan-tropical and warm-temperate genus of about 18 species. It is similar to Agrostis, differing in having spikelets that disarticulate below the glumes at the base of the stipe. Many older descriptions of Polypogon distinguished it from Agrostis on the presence (Polypogon) or absence (Agrostis) of awns on the glumes. 

SOURCES:

Barkworth, Mary E. 2007. Polypogon in Flora of North American north of Mexico 24: 662-668.

Lu, Shenglian and Sylvia M. Phillips. 2006. Polypogon in Flora of China 22: 361 - 363.

T.A. Cope (1995) Polypogon. Flora of Somalia 4: 155-156

Plants annual or perennial. Inflorescences paniculate, usually contracted to spikelike, sometimes open/ Spikelets with 1 floret, without rachilla extenseion, falling together with all or some of the pedicel; glumes equal, exceeding the floret, chartaceous, 1-veined, scabrous, entire to bilobed, often awned; lemmas hyaline, 5-veined, the veins sometimes excurrect from the truncate tips, unawned, with a subapical awnlet, or with a geniculate dorsal awn; paleas 1/2 as long as the lemmas.

Polypogon includes 23 species. They grow in warm temperate regions, including on mountains in the tropics. There are 3 species known from Somaliland and Somalia.

Key to the species of Polypogon in Somaliland and Somalia. 

Global distribution of Polypogon.

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

Barkworth, Mary E. 2007. Polypogon in Flora of North American north of Mexico 24: 662-668.

Lu, Shenglian and Sylvia M. Phillips. 2006. Polypogon in Flora of China 22: 361 - 363.