Austrostipa bigeniculata

Austrostipa bigeniculata, sometimes called tall spear-grass or double-jointed speargrass, is a perennial tussock-forming grass of the Poaceae endemic to southeastern Australia, where it occurs in the temperate grasslands and grassy woodlands of New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and South Australia. It is a characteristic component of the now-fragmented native grasslands of the southern tablelands and basalt plains. The plant forms dense tufts 30-100 cm tall with narrow, inrolled, mostly glabrous leaf blades. Flowering stems are slender and erect; the open, somewhat nodding panicles bear narrow spikelets each containing a single floret with a tough, awn-tipped lemma. The most distinctive feature is the long, prominently twice-bent (geniculate) awn (15-50 mm long) from which the specific epithet bigeniculata is taken, which hygroscopically twists and helps drive the sharp-pointed seed into the soil.