Flora of New Zealand Series

Cladium teretifolium R.Br. Prodr.  1810,  237.

Machaerina teretifolia (R.Br.) Koyama in Bot. Mag., Tokyo  69,  1956,  66.

Type locality: Australian. Recorded also from New Guinea.

Densely tufted, or covering large tracts of ground with rather more distant culms. Rhizome 2–4 mm. diam., fibrous and flexuous, often very far-creeping, covered with , closely imbricate, grey papery bracts. Culms 30–90–(110) cm. × 1.5–2.5–(4) mm., terete or slightly compressed, striate, yellow-green. Lowermost lvs reduced to sheathing bracts, pinkish brown, rarely dark grey, mucronate; upper lvs 1–3, < or ± = culms, terete like the culms except towards the subulate, pungent tip, internally septate, sheath loose. Panicle 4–18 cm. long, stiff, erect, narrowed and pointed towards the tip like a spear-head, with , closely packed branchlets; sheaths subtending panicle and branchlets short, membr., pale brown, striate. Spikelets , 3–5 mm. long, fascicled, very close-set, very dark brown, almost black, 1- or rarely 2-fld, but only 1 fl. fertile. Glumes 4–5, ovate, acuminate to mucronate, almost awned, dark brown, smooth or slightly scabrid at the back, margins ± ciliate. Nut 1.5–2 × c. 1 mm., oblong-obovoid, white or pale brown, surface deeply and ± vertically corrugated; style-base very small, hardly distinct, smooth.

DIST.: N. From North Cape southwards to c. lat. 40º, further south on the west coast of Wellington. S. Nelson and Westland.

Lowland swamps and pakihi.

B. teretifolia sts resembles B. rubiginosa at the flowering stage if the panicle is more open than usual, but the spikelets of B. teretifolia are us. 1-fld anl not 2–3–(4)-fld as in B. rubiginosa. At the fruiting stage the ripe nuts of B. teretifolia with their corrugated surface are distinct from nuts of any other sp.