Flora of New Zealand Series

Lampocarya tenax Hook. f. Fl. N. Z.  1,  1853,  277.

Cladium tenax (Hook. f.) Druce in Rep. bot. (Soc.) Exch. Cl. Manchr for 1916  4,  1917,  615.

Machaerina tenax (Hook. f.) Koyama in Bot. Mag., Tokyo  69,  1956,  66.

Original localities: "Northern Island; Opurago and Tolaga, Banks and Solander; Bay of Islands, R. Cunningham; Auckland, Sinclair." Lectotype: K, Auckland, Sinclair; this specimen consists of 2 infls with good fr. but without Lvs or base.

Light green, dense yet slender tufts. Rhizome 2–3 mm. diam., with culms closely and evenly spaced along it. Culms (15)–25–120–(165) cm. × 0.5–1.5 mm., terete, rigid and wiry. Lvs reduced to basal, reddish pink, sheathing bracts, but the uppermost often with a terete lamina like the culm. Infl. 5–25 cm. long, very narrow, spike-like; branchlets remote, slender, erect from sheathing mucronate bracts. Spikelets 6–8 mm. long, ± distant, not fascicled, light grey-brown or reddish, distinct at the tips of the branchlets, 1-fld. Glumes us. 3, the 2 lower glumes ± membr., lanceolate, shortly acuminate, the uppermost glume longer, spreading with maturation of the fr. Nut, including beak, c. 2.5 × 1.5 mm., ovoid, trigonous when immature, yellow, narrowed below to a short, dark brown stalk, narrowed above to a dark brown, pyramidal beak, c. 1 mm. long, rounded at the tip.

DIST.: N., S., St., Ch. Throughout, but not common in Northland and rare on the eastern side of South Id except in Southland.

Swamp and lake edges, forest margins and scrub, pakihi; sea level to 750 m. altitude.

The N.Z. plant was formerly placed in Cladium gunnii Hook. f. (Fl. Tasm. 2, 1858. 95, t. 148 B). Blake writing of Cladium gunnii Hook. f. in Trans. roy. Soc. S. Aust. 67, 1943, 59, says "Lampocarya tenax Hook. f. was founded on New Zealand material; the specimens which I have seen from New Zealand do not match the Australian material."

B. tenax flowers later than other N.Z. spp., (between December and February) and the fr. is long-persistent. The sp. may be easily recognised when fls are mature because of the spreading glumes.