Flora of New Zealand Series

Rhizome far-extending, woody, ± 5 mm diam., with short, dark purple-brown scales. Stems to 40 cm high, slender but tough, 3-angled, smooth, leafy at base. Leaves ± = stems or much < stems, all basal, 10-15 mm wide, flat, midrib and 2 lateral nerves white and prominent, margins finely scabrid, tip acute; sheaths purple. Involucral bracts > inflorescence, 7-11, leaf-like, almost equal in length. Inflorescence a compound umbel with many filiform rays to 10 cm long. Spikelets many-flowered, in small digitate clusters of 2-6 or solitary on the branchlets, linear-oblong, compressed, acute, ± 3.5-7 × 1 mm, greenish-brown. Glumes slightly > 1 mm long, ± imbricate but thickened junction with rhachilla obvious at base of each glume, ovate, acute, tip slightly spreading, many-nerved, keel green. Stamens 3. Style-branches 3. Nut slightly < glumes, ellipsoid, trigonous, brown.

N. North Auckland; Auckland - Auckland City, Waerenga; Wellington - Wanganui, Palmerston North. S. Nelson - Kahurangi Point, Nelson City. Escape from cultivation, as weed in gardens or in waste land or on roadsides. (S. Africa)

First record: Macmillan and Collett 1970: 3.

First collection: Palmerston North, A. Esler, Feb. 1959 (MPN).

Unlikely to be confused with any other sp., and recognised by the stout woody rhizomes with purple-brown scales, strongly purple sheaths, broad flaccid leaves, involucral bracts with conspicuous whitish veins, and elongate filiform umbel-rays.

Broad colonies are formed by peripheral increase from rhizomes, but growth is slow and C. albostriatus is one of the less aggressive spp. It is a garden outcast, occasional in roadsides and in damp waste places, and is sometimes a weed of footpaths in suburban areas, spreading vegetatively under garden fences. It was often grown in the past as an ornamental near ponds and on drier sites and is persistent in older gardens, but is rarely planted now.