Flora of New Zealand Series

Erect bright green perennial tussock with very narrow rolled leaves in slender shoots white at base, below a long narrow panicle with long fine intertwining awns; branching intravaginal and at nodes. Leaf-sheath to 10 cm, scabrid as leaf-blades, margins ciliate. Prophyll to 10 cm, hairy. Ligule 2.5 mm, becoming acute, minutely prickle-toothed. Leaf-blade to 60 cm × 0.3 mm diam., terete, abaxially beset with small antrorse prickles, adaxially and on margins very finely short hairy. Culm to 1 m, internodes hairy especially below nodes, antrorsely prickle-toothed elsewhere; nodes ± geniculate. Panicle to 30 cm, contracted, much branched; rachis, branches and pedicels finely stiff hairy often densely so. Glumes unequal, violet below, hyaline above, keels sparsely finely toothed, produced to awn-like processes to 5 mm; lower to 8 mm, upper to 6 mm. Lemma 2 mm, cylindrical, slightly compressed, finely tuberculate, median nerve with long hairs, lobes minute; corona 0.4 mm, spines to 0.2 mm; awn to 50 mm, very fine (0.1 mm), weakly 2-geniculate, column lacking. Palea 0.75-1 mm, membranous, glabrous. Callus 0.2 mm, hairs to 1 mm. Lodicules 2, 0.4 mm. Anthers to 2.5 mm in chasmogamous flowers, 1 fertile anther to 0.5 mm and 2 rudimentary anthers to 0.2 mm in cleistogamous flowers. Gynoecium: ovary 0.6 mm; stigma-styles to 1.25 mm.

N.: Auckland and Hamilton cities. A garden escape; cultivated sporadically in both Islands.

Naturalised from horticultural importation; a New World sp.

First recognised in 1994. See also Gardner, R. O., Champion, P. D. and de Lange, P. J. Auck. Bot. Soc. J. 51: 31-33 (1996).

The authority given this species by Barkworth, M. E. Phytologia 74: 17 (1993) as (Hitchcock) Barkworth is a lapsus calami.