Mediterranean beard grass

Polypogon maritimus, commonly known as Mediterranean rabbitsfoot grass or Mediterranean beardgrass, is a small tufted annual grass in the family Poaceae native to the coasts and inland saline wetlands of the Mediterranean basin and southern Europe and naturalised in scattered locations in temperate North and South America, southern Africa and Australia. Plants are typically 5 to 30 centimetres tall, with slender, geniculately ascending culms arising from a small tuft and often rooting at the lower nodes. Leaves are flat, light green, 2 to 10 centimetres long and 1 to 3 millimetres wide, with smooth sheaths and a relatively long, blunt membranous ligule. The inflorescence is a dense, soft, oblong to ovoid spike-like panicle 1 to 5 centimetres long that is pale greenish to silvery and silky-villous in appearance, giving rise to the rabbitsfoot common name. Each spikelet bears a single floret enclosed by two glumes that are deeply two-lobed at the tip and bear a slender flexuous awn 4 to 7 millimetres long, with awned lemmas as well, the abundance of fine awns creating the spike's feathery texture.