Sea wheatgrass

Thinopyrum junceum is a robust, conspicuously glaucous, rhizomatous perennial grass of the Poaceae family growing 30-90 cm tall and spreading by stout creeping rhizomes to form extensive open colonies that bind coastal sand. Culms are erect, stout, smooth and few-noded, arising at intervals from the rhizomes. Leaf blades are stiff, often inrolled or convolute, 10-30 cm long and 3-7 mm wide when flattened, with a strongly glaucous-blue cast, prominently ribbed on the upper surface and sharply pointed at the tip; leaf sheaths are smooth and the ligule is a very short truncate membrane less than 1 mm long. The inflorescence is a stout, erect, two-rowed spike 8-25 cm long with broad bluntly elliptic spikelets borne singly at each node of a tough rachis that breaks up at maturity (the spike fragmenting into single-spikelet joints), this disarticulating-rachis feature being a distinguishing character from the related Elymus and Lolium. Spikelets are 1.5-2.5 cm long and contain four to eight florets. Glumes are firm, oblong, several-nerved, blunt and slightly thickened. Lemmas are leathery, lanceolate, awnless and somewhat keeled in the upper part. Native to sandy seashores throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and adjacent Western Asia.