Carex buchananii Berggr.
Strict, red-brown, occasionally yellow-green tufts to ± 50 cm high. Leaves plano-convex, upper surface matt, shining on underside. Female spikes c. 5, distant, ± sessile, to 3 cm × ± 4 mm, silvery. Utricles dark brown above; beak long, scabrid, deeply cleft. Stigmas 2.
N. Local in Hawkes Bay and Wellington. S. Nelson; Marlborough; Canterbury; Otago; rare in Fiordland and Southland. In coastal scrub, damp ground near streams and short-tussock grassland; lowland to montane.
Densely tufted, with reddish or green colour forms; an increasing nuisance in parts of Central Otago - in pasture and lucerne on irrigated flats, and on close-grazed, low density grassland in the seepage zone below water races on hill country.
