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Mallee Love-grass
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| Photos of Mallee Love-grass | Family: Grass (Poaceae syn. Gramineae) |
| Scientific Name: | Eragrostis dielsii |  Mature plants of Mallee Love-grass Photo: A J Brown | |||||
Other Common Name: | Mulka | ||||||
Status: | Native to Australia | ||||||
Plant Description: | Tufted, stoloniferous or rhizomatous annual or short-lived perennial grass with branched and prostrate stems and growing to 60 cm high. Leaves are hairless, flat or inrolled to 8 cm long and 3.5 mm wide. Flower-heads are panicles with a few short branches or occasionally reduced to a spike. Spikelets are often clustered and curved to one side, containing 9-60 closely overlapping flowers and from 4-35 mm long and 0.7-1.5 mm wide. Commonly brownish, purplish, pinkish or reddish green. | ||||||
Habitat: | Common on the dry beds or margins of ephemeral fresh-water and saline lakes. A good coloniser of bare soils but appearing to avoid growing directly in saline or highly waterlogged conditions.
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Comments: | The Love-grasses are a large genus of some 300 species world-wide and at least 70 species in Australia. Few favour wet environments. One exception is Southern Cane-grass (Eragrostis infecunda) which can dominate swampy environments. |
Photos of Mallee Love-grass
 Mature flower-head of Mallee Love-grass Photo: A J Brown |  Flower-head of Mallee Love-grass Photo: A J Brown |
 Spikelets of Mallee Love-grass with exserted anthers Photo: A J Brown |
