Austrostipa nitida (Summerh. & C.E.Hubb.) S.W.L.Jacobs & J.Everett
Tall, erect, light-green, perennial tussock with fine crowded shoots and broad culm leaf-sheaths; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath to 10 cm, glabrous, auricular lobes to 2 mm, subtended by row of long hairs, symmetrical or asymmetrical, apex ciliate. Ligule 0.7 mm, fimbriate. Leaf-blade to 30 cm × 0.5 mm diam., inrolled, few-nerved, abaxially with antrorse prickle-teeth between veins and some short stiff hairs, adaxially with abundant short hairs, margins with antrorse prickle-teeth. Culm to 60 cm, nodes glabrous, internodes shortly pubescent below nodes, elsewhere glabrous. Panicle to 20 cm, contracted; rachis, branches and pedicels short stiff hairy. Glumes subequal, purple below, produced into long fine hyaline awn-like processes, 3-nerved, > awn column; lower to 15 mm, upper to 12 mm. Lemma to 4.5 mm, sparsely hairy becoming scabrid above, lobes to 0.5 mm; coma obscure or of few short hairs; awn to 40 mm, falcate, column 10 mm, arista to 30 mm, short hairy, lightly twisted. Palea internerve sparsely hairy, apex glabrous. Callus to 1.5 mm, hairs to 1.5 mm. Anthers 1.75 mm, penicillate. Our specimens are immature.
S.: Marlborough (Dashwood and Weld passes). Depleted grassland and on roadsides.
Naturalised from Australia.
Has not been collected since the gatherings of A. J. Healy in September 1941 and March 1942, although he found it on the Wither Hills, Marlborough, in 1947 (A. J. Healy hic comm.). There are no other reports and it has been searched for quite intensively.
