Flora of New Zealand Series

smooth brome

Light green, perennial tufts to 100 cm, with creeping rhizomes. Leaf-sheath glabrous; basal sheaths sometimes reddish purple. Ligule 0.5-2 mm, truncate, ciliate. Leaf-blade 10-16 cm × 4-9 mm, glabrous; margins finely scabrid. Culm erect, internodes glabrous. Panicle 10-20 cm, open or contracted, erect; rachis slightly compressed, scabrid on angles, branches filiform, finely scabrid. Spikelets 15-25 mm, 3-5-flowered, parallel-sided, compressed, brownish green. Glumes unequal, subobtuse, glabrous, keel minutely scabrid near apex; lower 4-4.5 mm, 1-nerved, upper 6-6.5 mm, 3-nerved. Lemma 8-10 mm, 5-7-nerved, rounded, usually glabrous but sometimes finely pubescent at base, apex obtuse, hyaline; awn 0, or rarely 1-2 mm. Palea ≈ lemma. Callus glabrous. Rachilla finely scabrid or with minute hairs. Anthers 4.3-5.5 mm. Caryopsis c. 7.5 × 2 mm. Chasmogamous.

N.: South Auckland (Ruapuke), Bay of Plenty (Whakatane); S.: Central Otago (near Luggate, near Alexandra). Roadsides.

Naturalised from Eurasia.

AK 98319, from the H. B. Matthews Herbarium, without any details of locality, seems to match B. inermis but the awns are 2-4 mm.

Recorded as an impurity in imported seed by Cockayne, A. H. J. Agric. N.Z. Dept Agric. 13: 210 (1916).