Great quaking grass

Briza maxima, the great quaking grass or rattlesnake grass, is a tufted bunchgrass in the family Poaceae growing to about 60 cm tall. From a small basal tuft of slender, light green leaves it produces erect, hairless culms bearing an airy, sparsely branched panicle of remarkably large, pendulous, broadly ovate spikelets 1–2.5 cm long. Each spikelet is laterally compressed, with several overlapping rounded florets that hang and tremble on hair-like pedicels in the slightest breeze, giving rise to the common names ‘quaking’, ‘rattlesnake’ and ‘shell’ grass; at maturity they ripen from pale green to a glossy straw colour, often tinged purple. Native to northern Africa, southern Europe and western Asia, the species has become widely naturalised in the British Isles, the Azores, Australasia, the western United States, Central and South America and Hawaii, often on dry sandy or rocky ground, road verges and disturbed slopes. The seeds and leaves are recorded as edible, and the ornamental spikelets are widely used in dried floral arrangements.