Alloteropsis semialata

Alloteropsis semialata is a tufted perennial C4 grass of the Poaceae family, distributed across Africa, Madagascar, southern and eastern Asia, and parts of Australia. Plants form dense bunches from a short knotty rootstock, sometimes with very short rhizomes, and grow 30 to 120 centimetres tall. Leaves are mostly basal, narrowly linear, 3 to 10 millimetres wide, often glaucous and stiff, with finely scabrous margins and a membranous ligule. The inflorescence is a digitate cluster of 2 to 8 slender, ascending to spreading racemes, each 5 to 15 centimetres long; spikelets are paired along one side of the rachis, 4 to 6 millimetres long, lanceolate, with awned upper lemmas. The species is of evolutionary interest as one of the few grasses in which C3 and C4 lineages coexist within a species, and it is an important component of African savannas and tropical grasslands.