Astelia graminea L.B.Moore
Type locality: Travers Range, Nelson. Type: CHR 125633, L. B. Moore and I. M. Morice, 1962.
Colonies evenly lfy without obvious tufts, lateral shoots developing freely and not restricted to subfloral lf-axils. Stem c. 1 cm. diam. Lvs c. 15–50 cm. × 5–10 mm., strongly keeled and us. drying folded; sheath closely covered with long narrow scales; lamina brownish adaxially with persistent detachable pellicle; abaxial surface pale buff and thickly felted between and often over the 3–5–(6) main nerves on each side of midrib. Infl. to c. 8–(12) cm. long, narrow; spathes narrower than lvs; racemes few, simple, not tightly congested; fls few, often < 12 per raceme. Perianth pinkish; tepals to 5 × 2 mm., spreading and ± recurved, the tube becoming orange and fleshy in fr. Ovary 3-locular, elongate. Fr. narrow-ovoid, c. 7–9 × 4–6 mm., bright orange.
DIST.: S. Known only from Nelson and west Marlborough.
In open grassland, often locally abundant with Chionochloa australis, 4,000–5,000 ft (1,300–1,700 m.) altitude.
SEX EXPRESSION AND HYBRIDISM
Female fls are us. quite without pollen. In the ♂ the ovary is us. well-formed with recognisable ovules, displaying the number of loculi and the placentation characteristic of the sp. Generally the male infl. withers after fl., but it is not unusual for a few ovaries to swell and colour and in these cases the peduncle also tends to thicken as in the female. Some infls., though looking little different from normal males, carry a considerable number of functionally bisexual fls which produce viable seed. Two sets of seedlings originating from such bisexual fls have been raised, each from a different sp.
At Lincoln some hundreds of plants grow in cultivation and honey bees and large flies are to be seen amongst the strongly scented nectariferous fls. Where male and female plants flower within a few metres of one another seed us. sets freely and it has been found to germinate well. On more isolated female plants ovaries swell and change colour but produce very few seeds. In a shadehouse, when pollen sources are scarce, fruits and seeds develop only on those individual racemes that are hand-pollinated. From a very limited programme of cross-pollination seedlings have been raised from several intergeneric crosses between Astelia and Collospermum as well as from one interspecific cross within subgenus Tricella of Astelia.
Wheeler (1966) presents details of several plants considered to be wild hybrids between A. solandri (subgenus Astelia) and A. banksii (subgenus Asteliopsis).
FL. 1. FT. 3–4.
