Giant finger grass

Chloris barbata, commonly known as swollen finger grass, purpletop chloris or peacock plume grass, is a tufted annual or short-lived perennial grass of the family Poaceae, probably native to tropical America and now pantropical as a widespread weed of disturbed ground, roadsides, sandy coasts and overgrazed pasture throughout the warmer regions of the world. The plant forms loose to dense tufts 30–100 cm tall, with slender, erect to geniculately ascending culms that often root at the lower nodes. The leaf blades are flat, 10–25 cm long and 3–6 mm wide, with rough margins, smooth glabrous sheaths keeled on the back, and a fringed membranous ligule. The inflorescence is a digitate, peacock-tail-like cluster of 4–10 slender, ascending to spreading purplish or reddish racemes 3–7 cm long, all arising from the apex of the culm. The spikelets are small, awned, densely packed and one-sided along the rachis; each spikelet has one fertile floret bearing a slender awn 4–8 mm long, and one or two reduced sterile florets, with conspicuous tufts of long silky hairs on the lemma margins that give the inflorescence a feathery appearance.