Chionochloa acicularis Zotov
; Holotype: CHR 70454! V. D. Zotov Leslie Clearing, Expectation Stream, Caswell Sound, 30.3.49.
Tall, slender, erect, pedicelled tussock, with sharp-pointed, glabrous, deciduous leaves. Leaf-sheath to 12 cm, dark above, pale shining below, persistent, becoming chartaceous, keeled, clothed with long (3 mm) abundant deciduous hairs, apical tuft of hairs to 7 mm. Ligule to 0.5 mm. Leaf-blade to 50 cm × 1 mm diam., acicular junceous, thickened at midrib, disarticulating at ligule, abaxially glabrous, adaxially with dense very short stiff hairs below, papillae and occasionally some prickle-teeth above; margin smooth. Culm to 60 cm, long and short hairs below inflorescence otherwise glabrous. Inflorescence to 10 cm, spikelets few; rachis, branches and pedicels abundantly long hairy especially at branch axils. Spikelets of up to 7 golden florets. Glumes becoming acute or mucronate, glabrous, > adjacent lemma lobes; lower to 11 mm, 3-nerved, upper to 13 mm, 5-nerved. Lemma to 5 mm; dense hairs at margin and erect hairs aside central nerve or rarely between all nerves, ± reaching sinus; lateral lobes to 4 mm, triangular-acute; central awn to 14 mm from divergent flat column to 2 mm. Palea to 7 mm. Callus to 1 mm, hairs to 2.5 mm. Rachilla to 0.5 mm. Lodicules to 1 mm. Anthers to 4 mm. Gynoecium: ovary to 0.8 mm; stigma-styles to 2 mm. Caryopsis to 3 mm. 2 n = 42. Plate 8F.
S.: South Westland and Fiordland. On peaty soils in grasslands, and scattered through scrub; 750-1225 m.
Endemic.
In a specimen from cultivation some scattered, weak, long (3 mm) hairs, like those of the sheath, were present on the abaxial leaf-blade though this was never seen in plants from the wild.
