Flora of New Zealand Series

meadow barley grass

Loosely tufted light green or greyish green perennials, to 50 cm. Leaf-sheath pale greyish brown or straw-coloured, lower with soft, shaggy long hairs and narrow auricles c. 0.5 mm, upper glabrous, not inflated, often without auricles. Ligule 0.4-0.6 mm, truncate, denticulate to ciliate, abaxially with sparse prickle-teeth. Leaf-blade 4-10 cm × 1-3.5 mm, abaxially very minutely scabrid, adaxially scabrid on ribs, with scattered hairs, tip acute. Culm 25-45 cm, erect or geniculate, slender, internodes glabrous. Raceme ± erect, dense-flowered, narrow, 2-4 × c. 0.8 cm, including the scarcely spreading awns, pale greyish green; rachis fragile, margins ciliate. Central ⚥ spikelet sessile; lateral spikelets Ø and much reduced, pedicels slender, c. 1 mm. Glumes of all spikelets about equal, fine, awn-like, scabrid, 10-13.5 mm. Lemmas of lateral spikelets 2.5-5.25 mm, shortly stiff hairy below the fine scabrid awn 1.5-3 mm; palea vestigial c. 0.8 mm, or = lemma. Lemma of central spikelet 7-8 mm, oblong-lanceolate, abaxially glabrous, adaxially villous, tapered above to fine scabrid awn 7.5-11 mm, overtopping glumes. Palea ≈ lemma, folded, minutely bifid, keels glabrous, but interkeel short stiff hairy near ciliate apex; rachilla prolongation 3-3.5 mm. Lodicules 1.5 mm, hairy, narrow. Anthers c. 3 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 1.0 mm; stigma-styles 1.5 mm. Caryopsis 4-6 × 1-1.3 mm; embryo 1.0 mm.

N.: only known from Hawkes Bay (near Porangahau); S.: one early collection from near Christchurch. In wetter coastal paddocks. FL Nov-Feb.

Naturalised from western and southern Europe and north-western Africa.

The correct name in Hordeum is H. secalinum Schreb., Spicil. Fl. Lips. 148 (1771).