Mossman river grass

Cenchrus echinatus, commonly known as southern sandbur, hedgehog grass or burgrass, is a tufted annual or short-lived perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to tropical and subtropical America from the southern United States through Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and into much of South America, and widely naturalised as a weed across the warmer parts of Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. The plant grows in spreading tussocks 20 to 90 centimetres tall, with culms that are often geniculate at the base and root at the lower nodes. Leaves are flat, 5 to 25 centimetres long and 3 to 9 millimetres wide, light green and often glabrous to sparsely pilose. The inflorescence is a terminal raceme 2 to 10 centimetres long of three to twenty densely packed spiny burs, each bur a globose involucre of stiff, retrorsely barbed bristles fused at the base and enclosing one to four spikelets. The mature burs detach readily and adhere strongly to animal fur, human clothing and the feet of grazing livestock, providing both the plant's principal dispersal mechanism and the basis for its weedy reputation.