Austrostipa elegantissima

Austrostipa elegantissima, commonly known as feather speargrass or elegant speargrass, is a graceful, tufted perennial grass of the family Poaceae endemic to southern Australia, occurring across Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales in mallee, open woodland, semi-arid shrubland and disturbed sandy or loamy ground. The plant forms a loose tussock 30 to 100 centimetres tall, with slender wiry erect culms and narrow flat or inrolled greyish-green leaf blades 5 to 25 centimetres long arising from sheaths with a short membranous ligule. The inflorescence is a large, very open and delicate, broadly pyramidal panicle 15 to 40 centimetres long, with extremely fine, almost hair-like, widely spreading branches that quiver in the slightest breeze, giving the species its characteristic gossamer or feathery appearance. Each one-flowered spikelet bears two acute glumes and a narrow lemma armed with a slender, twice-bent, finely plumose terminal awn 4 to 8 centimetres long, the long feathery awns aiding wind dispersal and self-burial of the sharply pointed caryopsis in the soil.