Fodder cane

Saccharum spontaneum, the fodder cane or wild sugarcane (Sanskrit kāśa), is a tall, rhizomatous perennial grass of the Poaceae native to South and Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and east Africa, and naturalized throughout the tropics. Plants form dense colonies from stout, scaly rhizomes, with erect culms 1–5 m tall, smooth and waxy, 5–15 mm thick. Leaf blades are linear, 30–120 cm long, 4–15 mm wide, with rough margins and a strong white midrib; ligules are membranous, 2–3 mm long. The inflorescence is a large, plumose, silvery-white silky panicle 20–60 cm long, the rachis bearing many slender ascending branches that disarticulate at maturity. Spikelets are paired (one sessile, one pedicellate), each 3–4 mm long, enveloped at the base by abundant silky hairs 2–3 times the spikelet length, which act as a wind-dispersal pappus. Anthers are 1.5–2 mm long, purple. Flowering occurs August–December. This species is one of the parental taxa of cultivated sugarcane.