Schoenus tendo (Hook.f.) Banks & Sol. ex Hook.f.
Chaetospora tendo Banks et Sol. ex Hook. f. Fl. N.Z. 1, 1853, 273.
Original localities: "Northern Island. Opuragi, in wet, shrubby places, Banks and Solander. On clay hills, common, Sinclair etc." There are Banks and Solander specimens at BM.
Rush-like; rhizome short, up to 4 mm. diam. Culms (40)–50–100–(120) cm. × c. 1mm., very thickly crowded, erect or drooping, light green, shining. Lvs reduced to sheathing mucronate bracts, dark red-purple, almost black, the mucro more elongated in the uppermost bracts; mouth of sheath fringed with cobwebby hairs. Panicle (1.5)–4–10–(12) cm. long, very narrow, with ± distant fascicles of 3–4 branchlets, each fascicle subtended by a sheath 0.5–1.5 mm. long, ciliate at the mouth; branchlets flexuous, laterally compressed and toothed along edges, each bearing a solitary spikelet or branched again. Spikelets 5–8 mm. long, 2–4-fld, linear-lanceolate, dark brown, almost black. Glumes 10–13, ovate-lanceolate, acute, margins ciliate towards the apex with tangled woolly hairs, the lower 6–8 glumes shorter, empty, 2–4 succeeding glumes fertile, the 2 upper glumes empty. Hypog. bristles 3–6, threadlike, < or > nut. Stamens 2. Style-branches 2, occ. 3. Nut c. 1.5 × 1mm., unequally biconvex, obovoid, obtuse to retuse, smooth, pale cream or light brown.
DIST.: N. From North Cape southwards to lat. 38º, local further south.
Lowland scrub.
Cheeseman (Man. N.Z. Fl. 1925, 228) cited a gathering of Kirk's from Aorere Valley, Nelson under Schoenus tendo. Kirk's specimens have not been found but more recent collections from Aorere Valley determined as Schoenus tendo have proved to be Lepidosperma filiforme.
Plants growing in kauri forest often have long, drooping culms.