Durban crowfoot

Dactyloctenium aegyptium is a tufted annual grass of the Poaceae family growing 15-60 cm tall with culms that are geniculately ascending, often rooting at the lower nodes to form loose mats, smooth, branched and few- to several-noded. Leaf blades are flat, linear, 4-20 cm long and 2-7 mm wide, with conspicuous long bulbous-based hairs along the margins near the base and scaberulous tips; leaf sheaths are loose, keeled and similarly sparsely bristly. The ligule is a short ciliate membrane less than 1 mm tall. The inflorescence is highly distinctive: a digitate cluster of two to seven (most often four to five) stout, finger-like spikes 1.5-5 cm long radiating from the tip of the culm and curving outwards; each spike bears two regular rows of densely overlapping spikelets on its lower side, the rachis projecting beyond the last spikelet as a short pointed bristle. Spikelets are 3-4 mm long, ovate, laterally compressed and contain three to five florets. Glumes are unequal, the upper bearing a short stout curved awn arising near the apex; lemmas are firm, keeled and shortly mucronate. Native to tropical Africa and Asia and now pantropical, growing on disturbed sandy and cultivated ground.