Ehrharta villosa (L.f.) Schult. & Schult.f.
pyp grass
Strongly rhizomatous perennials to 200 cm, with very stout naked culms branched above and bearing few leaves reduced to sheaths at base and at lower nodes, leaves at upper nodes longer, with involute blades. Leaf-sheath glabrous, finely many-nerved, light brown or purplish. Ligule c. 1 mm, truncate with ciliate fringe. Collar thick, hairs to 2 mm. Leaf-blade to 16 cm, strongly involute, abaxially glabrous, adaxially strongly ribbed and finely pubescent-scabrid, narrowed to fine, semipungent tip. Culm to 2 m, nodes purplish to blackish, internodes glabrous. Panicle to 25 cm, narrow, erect, rather lax; rachis and short, filiform, flexuose branchlets glabrous, fascicled below; pedicels filiform, smooth, becoming sparsely scabrid above. Spikelets 10-15 mm, oblong, very pale greyish brown. Glumes subequal, ± enclosing spikelet, 10-14 mm, 5-7-nerved, sub-membranous, oblong, subacute, glabrous with margins ciliolate near tip. Lemmas of Ø florets similar in shape, 7-nerved, narrow-oblong, entire at base, coriaceous, densely villous, mucro to 2 mm; lower Ø lemma < upper, callus hairs to 3 mm; upper Ø lemma bearded on each side above the contracted base. Lemma of ⚥ floret ≈ Ø lemma, 7-nerved, oblong, subcoriaceous, truncate, less villous than Ø lemmas. Palea 9 mm, membranous, glabrous. Lodicules c. 2 mm, glabrous. Stamens 6; anthers 6-8 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 1.0-1.3 mm; stigma-styles to 3.5 mm. Caryopsis c. 6.5 × 2.5 mm.
N.: Wanganui (Turakina Beach); Hawke's Bay (Taikura near Blackhead Point). Sand dunes and sandy places.
Naturalised from South Africa.
Originally planted at Turakina Beach in the early 1960s as a sand dune binder. A note on AK 216398 A. E. Esler Turakina Beach, 1969, indicated that it was showing a tendency to increase.
