A tall perennial grass of the Guinea savanna, part of the tussock-grass cover of open woodland.
Loudetia arundinacea (family Poaceae) is a robust, tufted perennial grass with stems 60 cm to 3 metres tall, sometimes bearded at the joints, and flat, narrow leaves 20 to 70 cm long. The lower leaf sheaths are usually silky-haired. Its flower head is a narrow panicle 18 to 70 cm long whose branches grow in conspicuous whorls, and its brown spikelets, 6 to 13 mm long, each carry a bristle (awn) 2 to 4 cm long.
It was first described in 1851, as Tristachya arundinacea, from Tigray in Ethiopia, and it is widespread in tropical Africa. The Flora of West Tropical Africa includes it, and one of its former names, Loudetia eripoda, was based on a specimen from the Tibati highlands of Cameroon. Kew's Flora of Tropical East Africa records it in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, in Brachystegia (miombo) woodland, sometimes at the edges of drainage channels, at 700 to 1,900 metres.
Sources: PROTA4U database (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa), which compiles records from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève, FAO EcoCrop and other botanical databases.
Grows wild in savanna grassland.