Sporobolus pyramidalis

Sporobolus pyramidalis, often called giant rat's-tail grass or cat's-tail dropseed, is a coarse, densely tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae native to tropical Africa and now widely naturalised, including as a serious pasture invasive in northern and eastern Australia. Plants form stout, hard tussocks 60-200 cm tall arising from a knotty crown without rhizomes. Culms are erect, stout, glabrous, terete, and unbranched above the base. Leaf blades are long, linear and flat to involute, 20-60 cm long and 3-10 mm wide, tough and fibrous, with finely scabrid margins and a prominent midrib; sheaths are smooth and tight; the ligule is reduced to a short rim of dense short hairs about 0.5 mm long. The inflorescence is a large, erect, narrowly pyramidal to lanceolate panicle 15-50 cm long, with whorled, ascending to spreading primary branches that themselves bear short secondary branchlets densely covered with appressed spikelets. Spikelets are small, 1.5-2.2 mm long, lanceolate, greyish-green to purplish, and contain a single floret that readily disarticulates above the unequal glumes. The caryopsis is small, oblong-ellipsoid, reddish-brown and falls free of the lemma and palea at maturity. The species thrives on disturbed pastures, roadsides, savannas and overgrazed grasslands.