Botanical name: Dactyloctenium aristatum    Family: Poaceae (Grass family)
Synonyms: Dactyloctenium seminipunctatum, Dactyloctenium aegyptium var. aristatum

Spiky Crowfoot Grass is a desert and sea-shore grass of sand and exposed coral outcrops. It is best distinguished from Crowfoot Grass by its short broad spikes clustered together in a compact head, the prominently pointed lemmas which give the inflorescence a “spiky” appearance and the granular, rather than rugose, grain. It is a sprawling clustered annual grass with stems slender, 4-38 cm high, geniculately rising up from a prostrate base, often rooting at the lower nodes. Leaf-blades are flat, 1-13 cm long, 1.5-7 mm wide. Inflorescence is compact, composed of 2-7 oblong to broadly oblong spikes 0.8-1.8 cm long clustered together in a dense, often almost spherical head. Spikelets are 3-5-flowered, broadly ovate, 4.1-5.2 mm long; glumes nearly equal, 1.7-2.3 mm long, the lower narrowly lanceshaped-oblong in profile, the keel thick, rough and often narrowly winged, the upper narrowly elliptic-oblong in profile, the keel extended into a stout awn shorter than or equalling the glume. Spiky Crowfoot Grass is found in NE Tropical Africa to Kenya and NW India.

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The flower labeled Spiky Crowfoot Grass is ...