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noun

Spinifex n.

(Bot.) A genus of chiefly Australian grasses, the seeds of which bear an elastic spine. Spinifex hirsutus (black grass) and Spinifex longifolius are useful as sand binders. Spinifex paradoxusis a valuable perennial fodder plant. Also, a plant of this genus.

Any of several Australian grasses of the genus Tricuspis, which often form dense, almost impassable growth, their leaves being stiff and sharp-pointed.

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Etymology of 'Spinifex'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spinifex" Quotes from Famous Books

... desert; he ran through the mountains; he ran through the salt-pans; he ran through the reed-beds; he ran through the blue gums; he ran through the spinifex; he ran ...

— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... a time of past vegetation; again picking up another creek, to lose it in like manner, knowing that to retrace their steps was impossible; making at last for a hazy, blue line in the distance that turned out to be spinifex and stunted forest; trusting still that this might indicate a change that would lead them to higher country and to water, they would struggle ...

— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... account of it my reader must consult Stuart's report. Approaching the pillar from the south, the traveller must pass over a series of red sandhills, covered with some scrubs, and clothed near the ground with that abominable vegetable production, the so-called spinifex or porcupine grass—botanically, the Triodia, or Festuca irritans. The timber on the sandhills near the pillar is nearly all mulga, a very hard acacia, though a few tall and well-grown casuarinas—of a kind that is new to me, ...

— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... land, and the furrows remain silent witnesses to the past. They are useful as drains it is true; but, being so broad, the water only passes off slowly and encourages the rough grass and "bull-polls" to spring up, which are as uneatable by cattle as the Australian spinifex. ...

— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... occasional strong south-east winds. A number of stony-topped hills, from 150 to 200 feet in height, were scattered over the northern parts of the island. In the valleys was a little sandy soil, nourishing the spinifex, and a stunted kind of ...

— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... staminate or pistillate flowers. In Coix and Polytoca the plant bears both male and female spikelets in the same inflorescence, but in Zea on the same plant they occur as distinct inflorescences. The littoral grass Spinifex is dioecious. ...

— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... thinkin' maybe about me an' not about the high path or the low—though 'tis only the low that's used these twinty years. Her head was down. I tried to call her. She didn't hear, but wint an an' an. All at wanst I saw the ground give way. She shlipped an' snatched at the spinifex. Wan minnit she held, an' thin slid down, down into the say. An' I woke callin' 'Mary—Mary' ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker