Tall ehrharta

Ehrharta longiflora, commonly known as tall ehrharta or annual veldtgrass, is an annual or short-lived perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to southern Africa and widely naturalised in Mediterranean climates around the world, including Australia, California and southern Europe, where it is often weedy in disturbed ground, gardens, woodland edges and shaded urban habitats. It grows 30 to 90 centimetres tall, forming loose tufts of slender, soft, bright green leaves 5 to 15 centimetres long and a few millimetres wide, with membranous ligules and open sheaths. The inflorescence is a slender, open, somewhat nodding panicle 8 to 25 centimetres long bearing scattered spikelets on fine wiry branchlets. Each spikelet contains a single fertile floret with two conspicuous sterile lemmas below it, the upper sterile lemma bearing a long curved awn that gives the species its name. The species thrives in cool, moist, shaded sites in winter-wet, summer-dry climates.