Aristida contorta

Aristida contorta, the bunched kerosene grass or sand-hill wiregrass, is a tufted annual or short-lived perennial grass in the family Poaceae, native and widespread across arid and semi-arid Australia, where it is one of the most abundant grasses of the central deserts, mulga shrublands, and spinifex country. Plants form small dense tussocks of fine, wiry, often contorted culms 15-50 cm tall, frequently bent and tangled — a feature that gives the species both its specific epithet and one of its vernacular names. The leaf blades are narrow, involute (rolled inwards), 5-15 cm long, often glaucous, with a hairy ligule. The inflorescence is a slender open panicle 5-20 cm long with spreading or somewhat appressed branches bearing many single-flowered spikelets. Each spikelet has two narrow glumes and a single floret whose lemma is tipped with a distinctive three-branched (tripartite) awn 20-40 mm long; the rigid hygroscopic awns twist and untwist with humidity changes, driving the sharp callus into soil or animal fur for seed dispersal. The species favours red sandy soils and is an important early colonizer after rain.