Tambuki grass

Andropogon gayanus, the tambuki or gamba grass, is a tall, robust perennial bunchgrass of the Poaceae family native to the seasonally dry savannas of tropical Africa, from Senegal east to the Sudan and south to Angola and Mozambique. The plant forms substantial tussocks up to four metres tall and seventy centimetres across at the base, with stout, deeply rooted, partly fibrous and partly cord-like roots that store starch and reach water during the dry season. The narrow, flat, hairy leaf blades may exceed sixty centimetres in length. In late wet season the flowering culms produce paired, digitate racemes of one-flowered spikelets, each subtended by long silky hairs and bearing a slender, geniculate, brown awn. The grass is widely cultivated as a high-yielding pasture forage in the African tropics and has become an aggressive invader of Australian woodlands.