Red natal grass

Melinis repens is a tufted to shortly rhizomatous annual or short-lived perennial grass of the Poaceae family growing 30-100 cm tall in loose clumps. Culms are slender, geniculately ascending or erect, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes, smooth and finely pubescent in the upper parts. Leaf blades are linear, flat, 5-25 cm long and 2-6 mm wide, scaberulous to softly hairy and somewhat glaucous; leaf sheaths are loose, keeled and often sparsely hairy with longer hairs at the throat. The ligule is a short fringe of hairs less than 1 mm tall. The inflorescence is an open, ovoid, rose to deep pink panicle 8-20 cm long that fades to silvery-buff with age and is one of the most ornamental and distinctive features of any pasture grass; branches are slender, spreading and bear paired spikelets. Spikelets are 4-5 mm long, two-flowered with the lower floret sterile and the upper bisexual, conspicuously clothed in long silky pink hairs (3-6 mm long) springing from the lower glume and lemmas. The grain is small, ellipsoid and pale. Native to southern and eastern Africa and now widely introduced as an ornamental and forage species, becoming invasive in many warm regions of the Americas and Australia.