Flora of New Zealand Series

squirrel tail grass

Slender, loosely tufted, light green to purplish perennials, 30-75 cm, with plume-like racemes. Leaf-sheath without auricles, with scattered fine, soft, straight hairs, c. 0.5 mm, in basal leaves, but sheaths glabrous in upper cauline leaves, uppermost dilated, often enclosing base of raceme. Ligule 0.3-0.7 mm, truncate, ciliolate, abaxially smooth. Leaf-blade 5-20 cm × 1.5-3 mm, ribs fine and finely scabrid, sometimes sparsely hairy abaxially, margins finely scabrid, tip acicular. Culm 20-65 cm, erect or geniculate below, internodes glabrous. Raceme nodding, dense-flowered, 7-14 cm, including fine, light yellow-green to purplish awns, and 9-12 cm wide when awns are fully spread; rachis very fragile, margin conspicuously hairy. Central ⚥ spikelet sessile; lateral spikelets Ø, pedicelled. Glumes of all spikelets about equal, very fine, awn-like, scabrid, spreading, 4-7 cm. Lemma of lateral spikelets much reduced, scabrid, 2-3.5 mm; awn « glumes, or 0; palea vestigial, 0-0.5 mm. Lemma of central spikelet 4.8-6.2 mm, narrow-elliptic, abaxially finely scabrid above, adaxially with a few scattered hairs above, tapered to a very long, fine awn 3.5-7 cm. Palea ≈ lemma, ± folded, keels ciliate above near bifid apex, abaxially glabrous elsewhere, adaxially with scattered hairs above. Rachilla prolongation = lemma, sometimes recurved. Lodicules 0.7-0.6 mm, sparsely ciliate. Anthers (1)-1.2-1.8 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 0.5-0.7 mm; stigma-styles 1.25-2.0 mm. Caryopsis 2.8-3.5 × 1-1.3 mm; embryo 0.75 mm.

S.: Canterbury (Timaru), Central Otago. Scattered plants or in colonies on roadsides and in paddocks, often in association with C. hystrix. FL Dec-Mar.

Naturalised from North America.

The correct name in Hordeum is H. jubatum L., Sp. Pl. 85 (1753).