Common Wallaby-grass

It is a tufted perennial grass that reaches up to 90 centimetres high. Glumes are green with or without purple, and occur in a panicle of from 10 to 30 spikelets, each of which contains from four to nine individual flowers.

It occurs throughout the wetter, cooler parts of southern Australia, through to hot, arid land such as Shark Bay. Its many forms span diverse habitats, variously tolerating a range of salinity and soils, including sands, loams, limestone, granite and laterite. It is considered one of the main native pasture grasses in southern Australia

Flowering occurs in spring or summer, usually in response to rain. The rust fungus Uromyces danthoniae, a species found that grows parasitically on the leaves of several Rytidosperma species in New Zealand and Australia, infects Rytidosperma caespitosum. It forms dense clusters of orange-brown aecidia on both surfaces of the leaf. It is also a host of Sphaerodothella danthoniae, a sac fungus that produces black, shiny leaf spots that occasionally coalesce into straight to irregular lines in the leaf surface of several species of Rytidosperma.