Stipa comata

Stipa comata, now more commonly known as Hesperostipa comata or needle-and-thread grass, is a tufted perennial bunchgrass of the family Poaceae reaching up to about one metre tall. It forms dense clumps of slender, in-rolled or flat blades arising from a fibrous root system, with stiff erect culms bearing narrow, somewhat nodding panicles. The species is named for its remarkable florets: each spikelet bears a single needle-like, pointed callus and a long, twice-bent and prominently feathery awn up to 19 cm in length. These hygroscopic awns coil and uncoil with changes in humidity, effectively drilling the sharp seed into the soil for self-planting. Native to North America from northern Canada south to Mexico and abundant across the western Great Plains and intermountain region, it grows in mixed-grass prairie, sagebrush steppe and open pine forest. It is the provincial grass of Saskatchewan and was collected during the Lewis and Clark Expedition.