Spinifex littoreus (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia
Introduction

Spinifex littoreus (Burm.f.) Merrill

Family: Gramineae

Synonyms

Waterpink (En)
Indonesia: rumput angin (Indonesian), suket kretanan (Javanese), jukut tiyara (Sundanese)
Thailand: ya-loilom, ya-linglom (Songkhla)
Vietnam: cỏ chống cát bay.

On coasts from India and Sri Lanka throughout South-East Asia to Taiwan and southern Japan.

Useful as a sand binder in unstable coastal dunes.

Stout, dioecious, stoloniferous grass up to 90 cm tall, with rigid, spiny leaves.
Spikelets in racemes subtended by large bract-like spatheoles which are fascicled into large capitate spiny structures of up to 30 cm in diameter.

S. littoreus is fairly common along sandy shores and dunes.

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