Achnatherum petriei (Buchanan) S.W.L.Jacobs & J.Everett
≡Stipa petriei Buchanan Indig. Grasses N.Z. t. 17, 2 (1880);
Holotype: WELT 59622! Buchanan's folio.
Erect, wiry perennial frequently branching at nodes; branching extravaginal; cataphylls short. Leaf-sheath to 3 cm, usually glabrous sometimes retrorsely pubescent. Ligule to 0.5 mm; auricular lobes to 1 mm, symmetrical or asymmetrical, often lightly pubescent. Collar thickened, occasionally with a very small tuft of hairs. Leaf-blade to 30 cm × 0.8 mm diam., narrow, involute, rigid, acicular, glabrous abaxially, adaxially clothed in short white hairs. Culm to 60 cm, wiry, internodes smooth, nodes purple, glabrous except for some very short hairs below. Panicle to 25 cm, narrow; rachis smooth below, scabrid above, branches and pedicels scabrid. Glumes ± equal, to 7 mm, hyaline, shining, pink-suffused, produced into awn-like processes to 0.5 mm, or split at apex, < awn column; lower 1-nerved, upper 3-nerved. Lemma to 5.0 mm, cylindrical, 3- or 5-nerved, margins contiguous, fulvous, clothed in white ± appressed hairs; coma to 0.5 mm, lobes short and inconspicuous; awn to 40 mm, ± straight or weakly 1-geniculate, short stiff hairy, column loosely twisted to 10 mm, arista to 30 mm. Palea = lemma, clothed in long hairs, apex ciliate, 2-nerved. Callus short (to 0.3 mm), oblique, hairs white, to 1 mm. Lodicules 3, one usually emarginate, or entire, 1-nerved, to 1 mm. Anthers to 2.7 mm, weakly penicillate and shortly caudate. Caryopsis 2.5-3.5 mm; hilum linear.
S.: inland basins of Waitaki River, and Central Otago; up to 1000 m.
Endemic.
