Rytidosperma pallidum

Rytidosperma pallidum is a tufted, perennial bunchgrass of the Poaceae family, growing 30 to 90 centimetres tall, forming dense, coarse tussocks from a fibrous root system, with erect, slender, glabrous or sparsely hairy culms that often bear conspicuous reddish anthers at flowering. The narrow, often involute, pale green to glaucous leaf blades are 10 to 30 centimetres long and 1 to 3 millimetres wide, scabrid on the margins, with sparsely hairy sheaths and a short ciliate ligule reduced to a fringe of hairs. The open, sparsely branched panicle is 5 to 15 centimetres long with slender ascending branches bearing several pale, often whitish or straw-coloured spikelets 8 to 14 millimetres long. Each spikelet contains four to seven florets enclosed between two long, narrow, papery glumes nearly equalling the spikelet, and the lemmas bear two awn-like lateral lobes and a stout, geniculate, twisted central awn 5 to 10 millimetres long, the lower part of which is covered in two transverse rows of long silky hairs. Native to dry sclerophyll woodland, heath and grassy slopes of southeastern Australia.