Flora of New Zealand Series

kangaroo grass

Stiff, reddish glaucous perennial tufts often forming large patches; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath light greenish brown to reddish tinged, coriaceous, keeled, lower sheaths villous, hairs fine tubercle-based, upper sheaths more sparsely hairy to glabrous. Ligule 0.7-1 mm, membranous, truncate, erose or shortly ciliate, finally shredding into fine cilia. Leaf-blade 15-35 cm × c. 2 mm, folded to flat with revolute margins, strongly keeled, of similar texture to sheath, scabrid, often a few tubercle-based hairs near margins above ligule; margins and midrib pubescent-scabrid near long, fine, acicular tip. Culm 25-90 cm, internodes glabrous. Panicle 15-35 cm, spikelets in 2-4 clusters at tips of slender branches, each cluster slightly overtopped by leaf-like spathe and consisting of 2-4 spikelet-fascicles; each fascicle subtended by a spathe-like bract > spikelets but < awns; rachis 2-3.5 mm, callus-like and covered with dense fulvous hairs; segments falling with sessile and pedicelled spikelets. Involucral spikelets ♂ or Ø: 8.5-15 mm, dorsally compressed, persistent; glumes ± equal, acuminate; lower firmly membranous, closely 11-nerved, inflexed and keeled near narrow hyaline margins, upper subhyaline, 3-nerved, 2-keeled with ciliate margins; lemma of lower floret shorter, 1-nerved; lemma of upper floret minute, or 0; palea 0; anthers, when present, 2.5-5 mm. Pedicelled spikelets: 9.5-13 mm, similar to involucral spikelets but narrower; pedicels glabrous, c. 2 mm. Sessile spikelets ⚥: 3.5-8 mm, narrow-elliptic; lower glume obscurely 7-9-nerved, fulvous, with stiff reddish hairs just below apex, upper shortly pubescent near apex; lemmas < glumes, glabrous, spike-like in upper floret, awn 3.5-5.5 cm, geniculate, column brown, pubescent, bristle scabrid; anthers c. 2-2.5 mm; caryopsis 4.5 mm.

N.: Auckland City (early record only), Rangitikei; S.: Nelson (between Nelson City and Brightwater), Marlborough (Waihopai Valley, Wairau Valley, Redwood Pass, near Blenheim), Canterbury (once collected at Bowens Valley on Port Hills). Roadsides, hillslopes in modified tussock grassland.

Naturalised from Africa.

GENUS OF UNCERTAIN APPLICATION

Kampmannia Steud. Syn. Pl. Glum. 1:  34  (1854) based on K. zeylandica Steud. cannot be referred to any known taxon; the type of New Zealand origin has been lost.