Flora of New Zealand Series

Small tufted annual, 1.5-7 cm high, hispid throughout with white, rigid, multicellular hairs. Leaves 1-3 cm long, all basal, filiform; lamina broadening at base to membranous sheath; tip acicular. Scapes 2-7 cm long, much > leaves; glume-like bracts 2, occasionally 3, c. 3 mm long, green or pinkish, ovate, spreading; awn glabrous c. 1 mm long with acicular tip. Pseudanthia 4-8 in each bract, ± = bracts, each with 3 hyaline fringed bracteoles, one very short, one sheathing male flower, one sheathing female flowers. Male flower 1 in each pseudanthium; female flowers 4-8 in each pseudanthium, connate and superposed in 2 rows; styles not connate. Seeds c. 0.5 mm long, obovate-oblong, blunt at top, testa faintly reticulate, brown with dark tip at each end.

N. North Auckland - Lake Kaiiwi, near Dargaville. S. Southland - Bluff Hill, Invercargill. Sandy ground.

(Australia)

First record: Kirk 1891a: 442.

First collection: The Bluff, T. Kirk, undated [probably 1890] (CHR 289038).

FL. 11-1. FT. 1-3.

Moore and Edgar Fl. N.Z. 2, 1970, 82 treated C. strigosa as native, then known only from Invercargill and Bluff Hill. In November 1970 it was collected in North Auckland, and such a disjunct distribution suggests that this annual Australian sp. should now be regarded as adventive.