Flora of New Zealand Series

Stiff, narrow, perennial tufts, to 100 cm. Leaf-sheath coriaceous, strongly keeled, striate, light creamy brown, glabrous. Ligule ciliate, hairs 0.2-0.4 mm. Collar hairs few, 1-1.8 mm. Leaf-blade 20-30 cm × 1-1.5 mm diam., coriaceous, folded, abaxially strongly densely ribbed, with few, very fine, scattered hairs 1-1.8 mm, adaxially finely ribbed, ribs minutely scabrid; margins minutely scabrid, long-narrowed to filiform tip. Culm 50-80 cm, erect, internodes glabrous. Panicle 15-27 cm, narrow; branches short, erect, stiff, almost filiform, sparsely scabrid to smooth, tipped by very narrow spikelets, branch-axils glabrous. Spikelets 9-14 × 1.5-2 mm, 9-12-flowered, glabrous, linear to narrow elliptic-oblong, greyish green. Glumes hyaline, « lemmas, nerve 1, smooth or scabrid; lower 0.4-0.6 mm, ovate-lanceolate, obtuse to acute, upper 0.8-1.4 mm, ± oblong, obtuse to truncate. Lemma c. 2.5 mm, 3-nerved, firmly membranous, elliptic, apex obtuse, sometimes very minutely scabrid. Palea ≈ lemma, glabrous. Rachilla 0.8-1 mm, sparsely scabrid. Stamens 3; anthers 1.2-1.8 mm. Caryopsis not seen.

N.: South Auckland (Firth of Thames, Coromandel). Hill pasture, on sunny faces.

Naturalised from Africa.