Thamnochortus bachmannii

Thamnochortus bachmannii, sometimes called the steenbuck thatchreed, is a tufted, evergreen perennial growing unbranched culms to heights around 70 cm. The culms are often grooved, the leaf sheaths persistent, frayed in their top halves.

The male inflorescence in picture comprises many pendulous spikelets. They are oblong and slender. The stiffly erect female spikelets become 1 cm long.

The species distribution is in the west of the Western Cape from the Cape Peninsula to the southwest of the Northern Cape in Namaqualand.

The plants grow on sandy flats where it is hot and dry in summer, cold and wet or fairly wet in winter. The habitat population is deemed of least concern early in the twenty first century (Dorrat-Haaksma and Linder, 2012; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).