Flora of New Zealand Series

reflexed salt grass

Perennial, erect or prostrate tufts, 8-80 cm; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath glabrous, firmly membranous, light brown, sometimes purplish near base. Ligule 1-1.5-(2) mm, entire and rounded, rarely tapered and subacute. Leaf-blade 3-6.5-(12) × 1-3 mm, flat, or folded with inrolled margins, abaxially glabrous, adaxially shallowly ribbed, ribs scabrid; margins sparsely scabrid, tip scabrid, acute or hooded. Culm (5)-10-60 cm, enclosed by uppermost leaf-sheath at flowering, later visible, internodes glabrous. Panicle (3)-10-24 × 2-18 cm, ovate to ± triangular, very lax and open; branches finely scabrid, naked below, later spreading to deflexed. Spikelets 3-6 mm, 3-7-flowered, greenish or purplish. Glumes ± unequal, minutely scabrid at obtuse apex; lower 0.7-1.2 mm, 1-nerved, elliptic-lanceolate, upper 1.1-1.8 mm, 3-nerved, ovate. Lemma 1.5-2.4 mm, indistinctly 5-nerved, with short hairs at base and on nerves near base, broad-elliptic or ovate, ± membranous with nerves not reaching wide hyaline upper margin; apex minutely ciliate, broadly obtuse to almost truncate. Palea ≈ lemma, keels ciliate-scabrid in upper ⅔, apex shortly bifid. Rachilla 0.6-0.8 mm. Anthers 0.6-1 mm. Caryopsis 1-1.7 × 0.3-0.6 mm.

N.: Auckland City, Bay of Plenty (Ohiwa Harbour), Hawkes Bay (Porangahau), inland at Te Aroha; S.: Nelson city and environs, North Canterbury and Banks Peninsula, near Dunedin, inland in Central Otago. Mud flats and salt marsh at sea level; inland in salt pans, 100-400 m.

Naturalised.

Puccinellia distans is indigenous to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It is well distinct from other spp. of Puccinellia in N.Z. by the truncate lemmas with broad hyaline band at apex into which the nerves do not extend.

Sterile and fertile plants of P. distans grow together at Okains Bay, Banks Peninsula A. J. Healy 20 Feb 1945 (CHR 48699a,b, CHR 48805, CHR 48806 - sterile; CHR 48739 - fertile). Sterile plants are 35-50 cm with flat to folded leaves, panicles with fine, widely spreading branches, lemmas c. 3 mm, anthers 0.7-1 mm, mature caryopses absent. In CHR 48806 sterile and fertile shoots were entwined.