Flora of New Zealand Series

bay grass

Spreading or occasionally narrow, light yellow-green, perennial tufts, 15-60-(70) cm, sometimes with prostrate culms; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath glabrous, rounded. Ligule ciliate, hairs 0.1-0.2 mm. Collar hairs to 3.5 mm. Leaf-blade 4-20 cm × 1-3.5 mm, usually flat, sometimes involute, abaxially smooth, sometimes scabrid above, adaxially finely ribbed and finely scabrid on ribs, sometimes with scattered long hairs near base; margins scabrid, tapered to filiform, acute tip. Culm 5-60 cm, internodes smooth. Panicle 3-30 cm, contracted to often very lax with delicate widespread branches, bearing clustered to well-spaced pedicelled spikelets; rachis smooth below, becoming scabrid above, branches and pedicels scabrid, branch-axils glabrous. Spikelets (3)-6-10 × 2-2.5 mm, (5)-7-16-flowered, glabrous, compressed, linear-lanceolate or narrow-oblong, grey-green, leaden green, or purplish. Glumes subequal or unequal, 1-nerved, submembranous, acute, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, keeled, scabrid on keel; lower 1.0-1.9 mm, subulate, upper 1.5-2.4 mm, lanceolate. Lemma 1.7-2.4 mm, 3-nerved with lateral nerves distinct, submembranous, ± opaque, ovate-lanceolate, smooth, but keel finely scabrid near subacute to obtuse apex. Palea < lemma, persistent, keels and truncate apex closely ciliate. Rachilla 0.3-0.4 mm, glabrous. Stamens 3; anthers 0.3-0.5 mm. Caryopsis 0.6-0.7 × 0.4-0.5 mm. Fig. 21.

N.: throughout; S.: Nelson, Marlborough. Waste ground, roadsides, modified grassland, sometimes in swampy ground or near hot springs.

Naturalised from Australia.

Allan, H. H. N.Z. DSIR Bull. 49: 67 (1936) noted that plants found in N.Z. agreed with E. brownii var. patens Benth. This lax-panicled variety was regarded for a time as specifically distinct, as E. benthamii Mattei [Jacobs, S. W. L. and McClay, K. L. in Harden, G. J. (Ed.) Fl. N. S. W. 4: 534-544 (1993); Edgar, E., Connor, H. E. and Shand, J. E. N.Z. J. Bot. 29: 117-129 (1991)]. However, Lazarides, M. Aust. Syst. Bot. 10: 77-187 (1997) treated E. benthamii as a synonym of E. brownii considering it to be "a variant without discontinuous features".

Fig. 21 Eragrostis brownii S, spikelet, × 22; G 1, G 2, glumes, × 32; L, lemma dorsal view, × 32; P, palea lateral view showing rachilla, and ventral view, × 32; O, ovary, styles and stigmas, × 56; St, stamens, × 56. © All rights reserved. [Image: 4X7Q]