Description

A coarsely tufted annual grass with culms rising to 60 cm high (to 1.7 m in E Africa); of wooded grassland and bushland, usually on sandy soil in the Sahel from Mauritania to N Nigeria, and extending to NE, E and S central tropical Africa and Mozambique.The grass provides good fodder for stock in sub-desert regions (4; Senegal: 1; Kordofan: 2; Jebel Marra: 5). It is a weed of cultivation in Ethiopia (7; in irrigation, 8).The grain is sometimes garnered for food in the Soudanian region (4) and is commonly collected at places in Zimbabwe (3, 9), where it has been under experimentation by the Department of Agriculture as a potential plant for cultivation. In Tanganyika it is considered a valuable famine food at Uwanda and south of Lake Rukwa (6). It is sometimes collected in Kordofan in time of shortage (2).