Andropogon virginicus L.
broomsedge
Erect, coarse, perennial tufts, 50-70 cm, light greenish brown, tinged reddish; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath keeled, strongly folded, firmly chartaceous, light green to straw-coloured, glabrous but margins long-villous. Ligule c. 0.5 mm, a ciliolate rim. Leaf-blade 5-20 cm × c. 2-5 mm, linear, coriaceous, flat or folded, somewhat keeled with prominent midrib, abaxially glabrous, adaxially finely scabrid on ribs and long-villous towards base; margins finely scabrid. Culm c. 25 cm, compressed, internodes glabrous. Inflorescence 25-40 cm, narrow-linear, interrupted; branches slender, erect, subtended by spathe-like leaves and bearing a few spatheate clusters of racemes at apex; upper spathes 3-6 cm, acuminate, tawny. Racemes fragile, c. 2 cm, 2-4 on a very short common peduncle, shorter than and mostly included within spathe; rachis very slender, long-villous. Pedicelled spikelet: usually reduced to villous pedicel, rarely with 1-2 glumes. Sessile spikelet ⚥: c. 3 mm, concealed by hairs, lanceolate, pale greenish; glumes very narrow, keels minutely scabrid; lemma of upper floret with very delicate straight awn, 10-15 mm; anthers and caryopsis not seen.
N.: North Auckland (Karikari Peninsula, Warkworth, Albany, Glenbrook), Auckland City, South Auckland (Waiotapu). Roadsides and along railway line.
Naturalised from America.
Andropogon is cited in Healy, A. J. Standard Common Names for Weeds in N.Z. ed. 2, 128 (1984), as being a genus whose seeds are listed as impurities in imported commercial seed.
