Flora of New Zealand Series

Mediterranean barley grass

Closely tufted, glaucous annuals, 7.5-40-(85) cm. Leaf-sheath green or straw-coloured, without auricles, lower covered with short, soft, horizontally spreading hairs, upper glabrous, the uppermost ± inflated. Ligule 0.2-0.6 mm, truncate, erose to ciliate. Leaf-blade 2-7-(14) cm × 1.5-2.5-(3.5) mm, flat, narrowed to acute tip, margins minutely scabrid, pilose or abaxially sometimes less densely hairy to ± glabrous. Culm 5-35-(80) cm, often decumbent, internodes glabrous. Raceme erect, glaucous, dense-flowered, ± oblong, 2-6 × 1-2 cm; rachis fragile but not disarticulating readily, margins finely ciliate. Central ⚥ spikelet sessile; lateral spikelets Ø, on slender pedicels 0.5-1 mm. Glumes of all spikelets ± equal, 10-15 mm, scabrid, awn-like, glumes of lateral spikelets overtopping lemma awns, inner occasionally widened at base. Lemmas of lateral spikelets 2.5-5 mm, abaxially glabrous, with scabrid awn 2-7 mm, adaxially with scattered hairs; rachilla prolongation 1-3 mm. Lemma of central spikelet 5.5-7.5 mm, abaxially glabrous, scabrid awn 6-15 mm overtopping glumes, adaxially with scattered soft hairs above. Palea = lemma, folded, keels shortly excurrent and scabrid near tip, abaxially glabrous, adaxially with a few short hairs apically. Rachilla prolongation c. 2.5-4 mm. Lodicules 1 mm, glabrous. Anthers 0.75-1.3 mm. Gynoecium: ovary c. 0.5 mm; stigma-styles 1.2-1.5 mm. Caryopsis 3-5 × 1-1.5 mm; embryo 0.5 mm.

N.: South Auckland, Hawkes Bay, Wellington (Raetihi); S.: Marlborough, North and Mid Canterbury, Central Otago, local in South Otago and Southland. In low-lying coastal saline flats, and inland at salty sites. FL (Sept)-Oct-Feb-(Mar).

Naturalised from Mediterranean and south-western Asia.

Although C. hystrix was not recorded until 1968 it was first collected in 1941.

The correct name in Hordeum is H. hystrix Roth, Catalecta Bot. 1: 23 (1797), but Bothmer et al. (1989 op. cit.) interpret it as H. marinum subsp. gussoneanum (Parl.) Thell.