Macrochloa tenacissima

Macrochloa tenacissima, commonly known as esparto or halfah grass and previously placed in the genus Stipa, is a robust tussock-forming perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to the western Mediterranean basin and North Africa, particularly Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, where it dominates extensive semi-arid steppes on stony calcareous and gypsiferous soils. The plant forms dense clumps 40 to 100 centimetres tall arising from a tough knotted base of fibrous roots and persistent leaf bases. The leaf blades are wiry, rigid, tightly inrolled and almost cylindrical, 30 to 80 centimetres long and about 1 millimetre in diameter, grey-green, and very tough — qualities that have made the leaves a major industrial fibre for paper, cordage, and matting since antiquity. Culms are erect, slender, and overtop the foliage at flowering. The inflorescence is a narrow, dense, spike-like panicle 20 to 30 centimetres long, silvery-green when young and straw-coloured at maturity. Spikelets are single-flowered with a long, twisted, plumose awn 4 to 7 centimetres long.