African bur grass

Tragus berteronianus, the African bur grass or spiked bur grass, is a small, tufted annual grass in the Poaceae growing 5–40 cm tall, with slender, geniculate, often spreading culms branching from the base and frequently rooting at the lower nodes. Leaf sheaths are smooth and loose, the ligule reduced to a fringe of short hairs; blades are flat, 1.5–6 cm long and 2–5 mm wide, with a rounded base and short, stiff, white, tubercle-based hairs along the margins giving the leaf edge a finely bristly look. The inflorescence is a stiff, narrow, contracted, spike-like panicle 2–8 cm long appearing as a single bristly cylinder of densely packed spikelet clusters along a central axis. Each cluster bears two to three small, one-flowered spikelets, the upper glume of which is conspicuously armed along its five thickened nerves with stout, hooked, golden-brown spines that readily catch on fur and clothing and effect dispersal. The fruit is a small, narrow caryopsis enclosed by the bristly glume. It is native to dry, open, often sandy ground from Africa through Arabia to India, and is naturalized in the Americas.