Stipellula capensis

Stipellula capensis, formerly known as Stipa capensis and commonly called Mediterranean needle grass or twisted needle grass, is a slender, tufted annual grass of the family Poaceae native to the Mediterranean basin, North Africa, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia, where it dominates ephemeral spring grasslands on dry, sandy and stony soils, fallow fields, garrigue and steppe margins. It grows 15-50 cm tall, with erect, smooth culms and very narrow, rolled, scabrous leaf blades 5-15 cm long. The inflorescence is a contracted, narrow panicle 5-15 cm long bearing relatively few spikelets, each consisting of a single floret. The unmistakable diagnostic feature is the long, twice-geniculate awn 5-10 cm long arising from the tip of the sharply pointed, hairy lemma; below the bend the awn is tightly spirally twisted and densely plumose, above the bend it is straight and scabrous. The awn is hygroscopic, twisting and untwisting with humidity changes to drill the sharp callus of the diaspore into the soil — an effective self-burying mechanism but a notorious injurious foreign body in livestock fleece and eyes.