Perennial grass

Ehrharta erecta, panic veldtgrass, is a tufted perennial grass in the family Poaceae, subfamily Ehrhartoideae, native to southern Africa and the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, where it grows in moist woodland understorey, stream banks and rocky shaded slopes. Plants typically reach 30 to 50 cm in height but can extend to 2 m under favourable conditions, forming loose clumps of slender, ascending culms that root at the lower nodes. Leaf blades are flat, lax, bright green and 4 to 12 mm wide, with finely pointed tips. The inflorescence is an open, often nodding panicle 8 to 20 cm long, the spikelets compressed and three-flowered with two small sterile lower lemmas and one fertile upper floret, the sterile lemmas typically transversely wrinkled and bearing a short awn. The species sets seed almost continuously through the growing year and germinates rapidly, traits that have allowed it to become a serious invasive shade-tolerant weed in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, southern Europe and parts of China.