Eragrostis tremula

Eragrostis tremula, sometimes called trembling lovegrass, is a slender annual grass in the family Poaceae, native to tropical and subtropical Africa and southern Asia, where it grows across savanna grasslands, cereal fields, fallow ground, and dry roadsides from West Africa to the Indian subcontinent. Plants form small tufts of erect or geniculate-ascending culms 20-70 cm tall, often slightly branched at the lower nodes. The leaf blades are flat to loosely involute, 5-25 cm long and 2-5 mm wide, finely tapering, with glabrous or sparsely hairy surfaces and a short ciliate ligule. The inflorescence is a delicate open panicle 8-25 cm long with very fine, widely spreading or drooping branches that quiver in the slightest breeze — the source of the epithet tremula. Spikelets are small, 4-10 mm long and 1.5-2 mm wide, narrowly lanceolate to oblong, laterally compressed, pale green to purplish, containing 6-20 closely overlapping florets. Each lemma is 1.2-1.6 mm long with three weak nerves, and the rachilla disarticulates above the glumes at maturity. The species often produces seed in large quantities and is an important famine food and grain resource in parts of the Sahel.