Flora of New Zealand Series

S. antipodus Cook in T.R.S.N.Z.  81,  1953,  159.

Type: S. African. Recorded also from Tristan da Cunha and Madagascar; some Australian specimens (NSW) appeared to be conspecific.

Densely tufted, annual, bright green or yellow-green, slender and flaccid. Culms filiform, (2)–6–16–(30) cm. × 0.2 mm. Lvs much < culms, reduced to a lower, open, membr., colourless sheath and an upper sheath, reddish at the base, with a truncate orifice, and tipped by a short mucro occ. extended to a definite, though filiform, green lamina. Infl. apparently lateral, of 1–3 spikelets; subtending bract to 8 mm. long, much > spikelets, filiform. Spikelets 1.5–2.5 × 1–1.5 mm., elliptical or ovoid, green and brown. Glumes 0.5–1 mm. long, ovate-lanceolate, ± acute, pale brown or reddish brown with distinct nerves, keel green, hardly excurrent, margins entire, pinched in at tip beside keel. Hypog. bristles 0. Stamens 1–2. Style-branches 3. Nut us. slightly > 0.5 mm. long, < 0.5 mm. diam., elliptical, acutely trigonous with thickened angles, distinctly apiculate, shortly stipitate, dull grey to black, surface finely reticulate.

DIST.: N. From Spirits Bay southwards to lat. 39º, rare further south.

Lake edges, stream banks and swampy ground.

S. antipodus : Type locality, Lake Waahi, near Huntly, western edge; isotype, AK, 59164, V. J. Cook 1764, Sept., 1942.

CHR 149550 was collected on the Snares during the 1947 expedition but the sp. is doubtfully native there.

The nuts of S. chlorostachyus are rather similar to those of S. cernuus but are smaller and distinctly trigonous. Cheeseman (Man. N.Z. Fl. 1906, 774) remarked in his notes to S. cernuus that there was a slender inland form, and in his herb. he separated under forma names specimens of S. chlorostachyus from those of S. cernuus.