Anthosachne scabra

Anthosachne scabra is a tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae family forming dense clumps 30-100 cm tall from a fibrous knotty crown without obvious rhizomes. Culms are erect or geniculately ascending, slender, glabrous or sparsely scabrous below the inflorescence, with several nodes. Leaf blades are linear, flat to inrolled, 8-25 cm long and 1-4 mm wide, smooth to scaberulous on both surfaces and often somewhat glaucous; leaf sheaths are glabrous and the ligule is a short truncate membrane less than 1 mm tall. The inflorescence is a slender, erect to nodding single-sided spike 8-25 cm long bearing solitary, distantly spaced spikelets at each node of a scabrid rachis. Spikelets are 15-25 mm long excluding the awns, three- to seven-flowered, sessile and lie flat against the rachis. Glumes are narrow, persistent, three- to seven-nerved and acute; lemmas are firm, lanceolate, scaberulous on the back and bear a stiff, often divergent terminal awn 15-40 mm long. Native to a wide range of open forest, woodland and grassland habitats throughout temperate Australia and New Zealand, flowering in spring and early summer.