Eragrostis setifolia

Eragrostis setifolia Nees (Poaceae), neverfail grass or narrow-leaved love grass, is a tough, long-lived perennial bunchgrass of the arid and semi-arid interior of Australia, occurring across Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Plants form dense, low, hard tussocks 15-50 cm tall arising from a much-branched, woody base. The very narrow, often tightly inrolled, almost wiry leaves are 5-20 cm long and less than 1 mm wide when rolled, glabrous and bluish-green; old leaves persist as a coarse basal mass. Inflorescences are open to contracted panicles 5-20 cm long, with slender ascending branches bearing numerous narrowly oblong, laterally compressed spikelets 4-9 mm long containing 5-15 florets; lemmas are pale and glabrous. The species is highly drought-tolerant and, as its common name suggests, persists through prolonged dry periods on cracking clay floodplains, channel country and gibber plains, providing important grazing in dry years.