Common name: Coast Button Grass
Dactyloctenium aegyptium (L.) Willd. APNI* 
Description: Slender to moderately robust, tufted annual or short-lived perennial, to 0.7 m high; culms spreading, usually geniculately ascending and rooting at lower nodes.
Leaves with ligule c. 1 mm long; blade 2–8 mm wide, often scattered with rigid tubercle-based hairs to 1.5 mm long, margins hirsute with rigid turbercle-based hairs to 2 mm long.
Spikes 2–4, each 1–5 cm long, ending in a sterile rachis point. Spikelets broad-ovate, 2.5–4 mm long, 3- or 4-flowered. Glumes 1.5–2 mm long, lower ovate, acute, upper oblong-elliptic, obtuse, keel extended into a divergent awn 1–2.5 mm long. Lemmas ovate, 2–3 mm long, keel extended into a stout mucro to 1 mm long.
Flowering: summer.
Distribution and occurrence: Planted as a sand stabilizer on the coast and persistent in some of these areas; north from Sydney. Native of Afr.
NSW subdivisions: *NC, *CC, *LHI
Other Australian states: *Qld
Text by S. W. L. Jacobs & S. M. Hastings
Taxon concept: Flora of NSW 4 (1993)
APNI* Provides a link to the Australian Plant Name Index (hosted by the Australian National Botanic Gardens) for comprehensive bibliographic data
***The AVH map option provides a detailed interactive Australia wide distribution map drawn from collections held by all major Australian herbaria participating in the Australian Virtual Herbarium project.
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