Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, South Africa

Common name: Wildegraansorghum, Sorghum, Wild grain sorghum, Amazimba, Amabele

Family: Poaceae (Grass)

Distribution: Northern Africa

IUCN Red list: Least concern

National red list: Least Concern

Comments: Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a native African grass that has been used for thousands of years and is one of the world’s five most important cereal crops, along with rice, wheat, barley, and maize, and the second by overall volume in Africa.
Scientists long believed that sorghum was domesticated in the semi-arid tropics of Africa, outside the winter rainfall zone of the ancient Egyptian Nile Valley where wheat and barley cereals were predominant. A recent archaeological site near Kassala in eastern Sudan, dating from 3500 to 3000 BC, has confirmed that peoples of the Butana Group were intensively cultivating wild stands of sorghum until they began to change the plant genetically into domesticated morphotypes.
Sorghum bicolor is typically an annual, but some cultivars are perennial. It grows in clumps that may reach over 4 m high.