Rat-tail grass

Sporobolus africanus, commonly called rat-tail grass or African dropseed, is a tufted perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to Africa and now widely naturalised through Australasia and other warm-temperate regions. It forms dense basal tussocks of slender, wiry, green to grey-green leaves 10-40 cm long, from which arise erect flowering culms 30-120 cm tall. The inflorescence is a slender, spike-like contracted panicle 10-40 cm long with branches appressed to the rachis, giving a characteristic narrow, rat-tail appearance from which the common name derives. Tiny one-flowered spikelets shed minute, mucilaginous seeds that adhere to clothing, animals and machinery, making the species an aggressive coloniser of disturbed pasture, roadsides, and degraded grassland. It is regarded as a serious environmental and pasture weed in eastern Australia and New Zealand.