Fountain Grass
Pennisetum setaceum
(Cenchrus setaceus)
A roadside weed near Nairobi National Park, Kenya. Dec. 2015.
Many grass species are difficult for the uninitiated to identify to species. Taxonomic keys use many terms to describe the characters of the spikes, spikelets, glumes, lemmas and rachises. This grass has large, distinctive plume-like spikes and is widely cultivated as an ornamental. It is an invasive weed in riparian habitats of the Sonoran Desert.