Flora of New Zealand Series

broad-leaved snow-tussock

; Holotype: CHR 62345! V. D. Zotov Mount Dennan, c. 4000 ft, Tararua Range, January 1948.

Tall, stout tussock with fracturing sheaths and long, broad, drooping, deciduous leaves which form a dense litter. Leaf-sheath glabrous or internerves or margins hairy, keeled, pale or purpled, fracturing into short segments, apical tuft of hairs to 1 mm. Ligule to 1 mm. Leaf-blade flat or shallowly U-shaped, glaucous, falling with part of sheath, abaxially glabrous but sometimes with some long hairs, adaxially with prickle-teeth or papillae; margin with long hairs below becoming glabrous or infrequently scabrid. Culm to 1.5 m, internodes glabrous or very infrequently long hairy. Inflorescence to 30 cm, spikelets dense on stiff, pulvinate branches. Spikelets of up to 8 purpled florets. Glumes glabrous, acute but sometimes shortly awned, > adjacent lemma lobes; lower to 14 mm, 1-3-nerved, upper to 18 mm, 3-5-7-nerved. Lemma to 6 mm; hairs dense on margin and in internerves, < sinus; lateral lobes to 6 mm including awn to 3 mm often long triangular-acute; central awn to 16 mm from twisting column to 4 mm. Palea to 10 mm. Callus to 1 mm, hairs to 4 mm. Rachilla to 1 mm. Lodicules to 1.5 mm. Gynoecium: ovary to 1 mm; stigma-styles to 3 mm. Caryopsis to 3.5 mm. 2 n = 42.

N.: Tararua Range; S.: mountains in Nelson, Marlborough, Westland and Canterbury.

Endemic.

CHR 358478 A. P. Druce 1980, Mt Garibaldi, bears leaves with abundant, dense, long hairs abaxially and although they become less dense up the blade, they are always present. The same specimen bears on the adaxial sheath surface short hairs in rows similar to those in C. australis. Adaxially at the base of the leaf-blade and above there is an enormous thick weft of long (2 mm) hairs. No other specimen seen resembles it for hairiness. CHR 179675 A. P. Druce 1968, Tararua Range, is of juveniles; these too bear long hairs on the abaxial leaf-blade surface.