Chionochloa crassiuscula (Kirk) Zotov subsp. crassiuscula
=Danthonia pungens Cheeseman Man. N.Z. Fl. 887 (1906)
≡Chionochloa pungens (Cheeseman) Zotov, N.Z. J. Bot. 1: 103 (1963);
Holotype: AK 1640! T. Kirk Smith's Lookout, Stewart Island, Jan. 1887.
Short, stout, robust tussocks. Leaf-sheath to 8 cm, glabrous, pale or dark brown. Ligule to 1 mm. Leaf-blade to 30 cm × 6 mm, very coriaceous, curved, shortly tapering to very pungent apex, adaxially with abundant prickle-teeth at base. Lemma to 4.5 mm; hairs dense on margin and aside central nerve, few or absent elsewhere.
St. Herbfields, boggy meadows, and scrub; 700-1000 m.
Tussocks may be small and prostrate at open, wet, windswept sites with leaf-blades up to 10 cm, but taller (30 cm) in favourable or sheltered conditions. Kirk's specimen from Smith's Lookout is like the former. There is a suggestion from cultivated material that short stature may be genetically determined, or that growth and change is very slow; CHR 182390 after 2 years in cultivation had leaf-blades to 7 cm, sheath to 1 cm, and an emerging inflorescence on a culm to 6 cm. CHR 212510 after 2 months in cultivation had leaf-blades to 5 cm on sheaths to 2 cm, and a panicle 5 cm on 12 cm of subtending culm. CHR 212523 after 9 months in a pot bore leaf-blades to 13 cm on sheaths to 4 cm, and a panicle 7 cm on a subtending culm to 20 cm.
The holotype of C. crassiuscula is tall, strict, very pungent; CHR 21860 L. B. Moore & L. M. Cranwell; CHR 262860a A. W. Purdie; CHR 321817 C. J. Webb & T. H. Webb all resemble it.
