This lifeform is found in the SE USA (Georgia, Alabama, and Florida). This lifeform is locally common in suitable environments.

Coast Bur (Cenchrus incertus to Cenchrus carolinianus) is found from Virginia to Florida to Texas. This grass can be found in open sandy soil on the coastal plain. Note the non-crowded burs with perhaps six spikes per bur. Sunbathers who step on this plant will remember the pain for quite some time.

Cenchrus (sandbur) is native to North America, Africa, and also the Orient.  There are about 22 species in this genus. The spikelets are subtended by a spiny base.  Although some species have bristles, several species have very obnoxious spines. Several of the species grow in open sand on beaches,  and barefoot people who walk among them will never forget the terrible experience. This genus was named by Linnaeus.  These grasses can be useful forage grasses before the spines are formed. There are now ten species established in greater North America.

Paniceae Tribe is a large tribe mostly of tropical distribution. Some of the members of this tribe are troublesome weeds.

Grass family (Gramineae to Poaceae) is a worldwide family of greatest economic importance.

Important plants, such as wheat, oats, corn, and rice, are found in this family. Mr. A.S. Hitchcock's two-volume Manual of the Grasses, revised by Agnes Chase, is recommended for the serious student of the grasses of the United States. Identification of grasses is difficult and a unique special vocabulary has developed to study this family. (Awns, glumes, lemmas, etc are some of the words most frequently used.)  The grasses are usually divided into several tribes to facilitate their study. Tribes in this reference are outlined according to Hitchcock.

Glumiflorae are a group of Monocots that contain the grasses and the sedges. (The similar-looking rushes, which are more closely related to the lilies, are usually not placed here.)

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.