spinifex

From translingual Spinifex (genus name), from Latin spina (“spine”) + Latin -fex (“maker”) (from Latin facere (“to make”)).

Two species of Australian spinfex, Triodia pungens (green) and Triodia basedowii (blue-grey)

Komatiite lava at the type locality in the Komati Valley, Barberton Mountainland, South Africa, showing komatiite's distinctive spinifex texture, which is formed by dendritic plates of olivine (scale shown by a hammer on the right edge of the photo)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

spinifex (countable and uncountable, plural spinifexes)

1. Any of numerous species of grass in genus Spinifex, growing in sand dunes.
2. (Australia) Any of several spiny grass species of the genus Triodia, endemic to arid outback Australia.
   • 1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, Virago Press, paperback edition, page 269:

     And there will be Ethel watching, just standing there, stirring something on the kitchen stove, or dusting the mahogany sideboard, or polishing the silver, and looking out the window, staring, just staring, as though she were watching the spinifex growing, or the sky hanging there, just staring with that terrible effrontery of someone who will not deign to react.

• buck spinifex
• spinifexbird
• spinifex mouse
• spinifex pigeon
• spinifex termite

• mulga

spinifex (comparative more spinifex, superlative most spinifex)

1. (geology, petrology, mineralogy) Composed of dendritic plates, which present as the scored texture of bundled, spine-like structures typical of komatiites.