Poa cookii (Hook.f.) Hook.f.
≡Festuca cookii Hook.f., Fl. Antarct. 2: 382, t. 139 (1846);
Lectotype: K! J. D. H[ooker] Kerguelen's Land, Christmas Harbour, on rocks and in moist places always near the sea, May-August 1840 (designated by Edgar 1986 op. cit. p. 433).
=Poa hamiltonii Kirk, T.N.Z.I. 27: 353 (1895);
Holotype: K! A. Hamilton Macquarie Island, 1894.
Large dense perennial tufts to 50 cm, with flat, spreading, light green leaves overtopping erect panicles, fibres from older sheaths in a tangled mass at plant base; branching intravaginal; leaf-blades persistent. Leaf-sheath greenish brown to dark brown, hyaline, glabrous; ribs prominent. Ligule 4-7.5 mm, deeply and sharply lacerate, glabrous throughout. Leaf-blade (9)-15-30 cm × 3.5-5.5 mm, strongly ribbed, subcoriaceous, flat, abaxially glabrous, obviously keeled, adaxially deeply furrowed, ribs densely, minutely papillose-scabrid; margins and curved tip smooth. Culm 9-25 cm, simple, erect, leafy almost throughout, internodes glabrous. Panicle 5-25 cm, oblong, cylindrical to ± clavate, contracted, with lowermost branches sometimes slightly distant; rachis glabrous, branches erect, short, only slightly spreading, ± papillose, bearing close-set spikelets. Spikelets 4.5-8.5 mm, 2-4-flowered, light green. Glumes unequal, membranous, glabrous; lower 2-3-(3.5) mm, 1-(3)-nerved, very narrow oblong-lanceolate, acute, upper 3-4 mm, 3-nerved, narrow ovate-elliptic, acuminate. Lemma 4.8-6 mm, 5-nerved, oblong-elliptic, narrowed to long-acuminate tip, almost glabrous but nerves and internerves with short scattered hairs near base, and midnerve finely scabrid above hairs. Palea c. 4 mm, very narrow, keels ciliate-scabrid in upper ½. Callus glabrous. Rachilla c. 1 mm, glabrous. Lodicules slightly < 1 mm, rarely hair-tipped. Gynomonoecious: each spikelet with 1-(2) lower flowers ⚥, anthers 2-3 mm, gynoecium c. 1.5 mm; upper flowers ♀ with minute colourless anthers 0.2-0.4 mm, on long filaments, gynoecium c. 1.5 mm. Caryopsis c. 1 × 0.5 mm.
M.: Among rocks and peat mounds near the sea, and to 200 m on slopes; often near penguin colonies.
Indigenous.
Also on Îles Kerguélen, Heard, and Prince Edward Is.
Poa cookii is the only sp. of Poa which is indigenous and not endemic to the N.Z. Botanical Region.
