Flora of New Zealand Series

Type species: A. mollis (R.Br.) S.W.L.Jacobs et J.Everett

Perennial, caespitose or rhizomatous; branching intravaginal or extravaginal. Culm simple or bambusiform, sometimes branching at nodes. Inflorescence a narrow or open, much-branched panicle. Spikelets 1-flowered; disarticulation oblique above persistent glumes. Glumes 2, equal or unequal, enclosing the floret, lower longer, 1-3-5-nerved, acute, acuminate, rarely mucronate, awned, or erose. Flower ⚥. Lemma cylindrical, coriaceous, indurated, fusiform, pyriform or turbinate, pubescent, hairy or tubercular-scabrid or both, 5-nerved (7- in A. flavescens), margins overlapping, terminating in a rim with or without a coma of longer hairs; lobes small or 0. Awn 0-1-2-geniculate, often very long; column twisted, arista straight or curved. Callus sharply pointed (blunt in A. verticillata), hairs usually different in colour and density from those of lemma, extending over lemma base. Palea enclosed by lemma, membranous, hyaline or ± indurated, ≤ lemma, 2-nerved, internerve hairy or glabrous. Lodicules 2 or 3, hyaline, glabrous. Stamens 3, anthers penicillate or naked at apex and/or caudate at base; in cleistogamous flowers reduced to 1 small fertile anther and 2 sterile small anthers. Gynoecium: ovary glabrous, stigmas plumose. Caryopsis tightly enclosed and conforming to shape of lemma; embryo to about ⅓ of caryopsis; hilum linear, ≈ caryopsis. Flowering chasmogamous or cleistogamous in aerial inflorescences. Fig. 5.

61 spp. endemic to Australia, 1 sp. indigenous to New Zealand and Australia - A. stipoides; 9 spp. naturalised.

Segregated from Stipa L. by Jacobs and Everett (1996 op. cit.). This treatment of species substantially follows that of New Zealand stipoids in Jacobs et al. (1989 op. cit.) which was based on Vickery, J. W., Jacobs, S. W. L. and Everett, J. Telopea 3: 1-132 (1986). The nine naturalised species of Austrostipa are classified in six subgenera viz: three species in subgen. Falcatae, A. nitida, A. nodosa, A. scabra; two species in subgen. Ceres, A. bigeniculata, A. blackii. The remaining four are placed each in a separate subgenus; the Australasian indigenous species, A. stipoides, is included in subgen. Lobatae.

Connor, H. E., Edgar, E. and Bourdot, G. W. N.Z. J. Agric. Res. 36: 301-307 (1993) described the ecological history of naturalised species.