Flora of New Zealand Series

Indian doab

Mat-forming, green or glaucous, 10-55 cm, with long, scaly rhizomes and long-creeping, much-branched, strong, wiry stolons rooting and tufted at nodes. Leaf-sheath chartaceous, light green to straw-coloured, ± keeled. Ligule 0.1-0.2 mm, truncate, ciliate. Collar hairs 1-2 mm. Leaf-blade 1.6-9 cm × 1-3 mm, sometimes slightly wider, abaxially glabrous or with scattered hairs, adaxially finely ribbed, papillose to scabrid on ribs, with row of hairs at base to 2 mm, midrib scabrid near blunt tip. Culm 10-50 cm, erect from geniculate base, internodes glabrous. Racemes (3)-4-6-(7), 1.5-6 cm × 1-3 mm, erect to spreading; rachis 3-angled, short-scabrid on angles, pubescent at base, bearing scarcely pedicelled imbricate spikelets in 2 secund rows. Spikelets 2-2.5 mm, green or purplish. Glumes 1-2 mm, reflexed from rachis at maturity, membranous, narrow-lanceolate, keel scabrid. Lemma = spikelet, curved to the ± hooded, shortly mucronate apex, glabrous, keel and sometimes margins with short hairs. Palea keels minutely scabrid, interkeel glabrous. Anthers 1-1.5 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 0.3-0.5 mm; stigma-styles 1-1.2 mm. Caryopsis c. 1 × 0.5 mm.

N.: throughout but rare in Wellington and Wairarapa; S.: Nelson, Marlborough, Westland, Canterbury, Central Otago (Alexandra); K. Usually coastal in sandy or gravelly places, in pasture, scrub, or on tracksides, often between dunes or in reclamation areas; also a weed of lawns, and in waste land, on roadsides or gutter crevices.

Naturalised.

Widespread in tropical and subtropical regions of both Hemispheres.