spinifex

spi·ni·fex

(spī′nə-fĕks′)

Any of various clump-forming, perennial Australian grasses, chiefly of the genus Triodia, growing in arid regions and having awl-shaped, pointed leaves.

[New Latin Spīnifex, former genus name : Latin spīna, thorn + Latin -fex; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

spinifex

(ˈspɪnɪˌfɛks)

1. (Plants) Also called: porcupine grass Austral any of various coarse spiny-leaved inland grasses of the genus Triodia

2. (Plants) any grass of the SE Asian genus Spinifex, having pointed leaves and spiny seed heads: often planted to bind loose sand

[C19: from New Latin, from Latin spīna a thorn + -fex maker, from facere to make]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Mentioned in ?

porcupine grass

References in periodicals archive ?

Sending Gibson off to look for help, Giles was soon reduced to crawling, his skin a mass of sores from the spinifex thorns and his head light from hunger and thirst.

Strewth..stranger than fiction; HOW A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AS TWO BIKERS MADE THEIR WAY AROUND OZ

They range from daisies whose seeds lie dormant for years before germinating in winter rains, yet holding some seed back for decades as an insurance policy; to multiple lizard species that share resources in a single spinifex clump by foraging at different times of the day; to nomadic humans that build strong community ties, yet move readily when the going gets tough; and the adaptability of desert businesses and agricultural enterprises.

Lessons from livinq on the edge

They describe the topography of anthills, mountain ranges, tumbling tracts of spinifex and rocky protuberances that spring from the red desert soil.

Pippin Drysdale: the Kimberley series the Tanami traces series

Site Location/environment W3-03 On flat featureless rhyolite plain, spinifex, gasses, east of existing HI rail line, artefact scatter focused around small gilgais W3-04 On flat featureless rhyolite plain, spinifex.

Towards a late Holocene archaeology of the inland Pilbara

North Melbourne: Spinifex Press (by arrangement with Zed Books), 2009, 144 pp.

Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity

Pluto Press, London, New York; and Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, pp.

Eco-sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology

She is also a novelist, aerialist, and Publisher at Spinifex Press.

The silences between: are lesbians irrelevant? World Social Forum, Mumbai, India, 16-21 January

(2.) de Ishtar, Zohl, 1994, Daughters of the Pacific, Spinifex Press: Melbourne.

A survivor's warning on nuclear contamination

Currently undervalued--in my opinion--are works from the Spinifex People of western Australia; the bark-painting community at Maningrida; and Ngukurr, where the justified fame of Ginger Riley has rather eclipsed other artists, such as Sambo Burra Burra, Amy Johnson and Gertie Huddleston (Fig.

Aboriginal art: Although some museums and art fairs still categorise Aboriginal art as ethnography, the market for it has grown in the past thirty years from nothing to nearly $100 million a year. Rebecca Hossack explains why it appeals to so many collectors, and picks out undervalued areas

This entry is also one of several candidates that would have benefited from an illustration, along with Spinifex and the routes of some of the major expeditions.