Avena strigosa Schreb.
sand oat
Rather slender, erect, glaucous tufts, 80-120 cm. Leaf-sheath glabrous or finely hairy. Ligule 2.5-5.5 mm, obtuse, denticulate, abaxially minutely scabrid. Leaf-blade 15-30 cm × 4.5-13.5 mm, finely scabrid on ribs and margins, occasionally with scattered sparse hairs. Culm internodes glabrous. Panicle (12)-18-26 cm, erect or drooping at tip, rather dense, equilateral, rather narrow; rachis smooth, branches and pedicels fine, minutely scabrid. Spikelets 35-40 mm, 2-flowered, falling at maturity only after fracture of rachis. Glumes 7-(9)-nerved. Lemma 11-15 mm, narrow-lanceolate, light brown or straw-coloured, later becoming darker, smooth and shining below level of awn insertion, green and scabrid above, often with a very few fine hairs near base of awn, each lobe-tip produced to a fine purplish bristle 5-7.5 mm, and often with lateral setae to 1 mm; both lemmas awned, awn 25-35 mm, geniculate, column mid-brown, twisted. Palea keel with one row of cilia, interkeel finely scabrid to minutely hairy above. Callus glabrous or with a few short hairs. Rachilla prolongation glabrous, tipped by few to numerous short hairs. Anthers 2.2-4 mm.
N.: Waverley, Wanganui, Palmerston North, Wellington; S.: Canterbury (Weedons), Otago (Balclutha). A weed in crops in light soil and on roadsides; also recorded in ballast and as a seed impurity (in 1883) in imported Russian wheat.
Naturalised from Europe.
