Flora of New Zealand Series

Type locality: Australian. Type: K.

In coarse tufts from a woody rootstock. Culms 50–140 cm. × 4–6 mm., rigid, laterally flattened with sharp, very minutely scabrid edges, to ± convex above. Lvs 3–5 mm. wide, similar to the culms but us. shorter, equitant at the base, margins, extremely minutely scabrid, tips acuminate. Panicle 10–20–(35) cm. long, narrow, rigid; branches distant, us. simple, erect; lowest bract with a stiff lamina 2–6 cm. long, upper bracts shorter, conspicuously mucronate, brown. Spikelets c. 6 mm. long, distant on the lower branches, fascicled above, 1–2–(4)-fld, only the uppermost fl. fertile. Glumes 5–7, ovate, acuminate, pubescent towards the tip, the lowest 2–3 empty. Hypog. scales 6, connate at the base, each terminated by a fine ciliate seta, up to ½ length of nut. Nut 2.5–3.5 × 1.5–2 mm., ovoid, ± trigonous, the angles thickened, surface at first wrinkled, becoming smooth at maturity, brown; persistent style-base hardly distinguishable from nut, glab., brown, with a small black mucro.

DIST.: N. From North Cape to c. lat. 38º30'.

Lowland on poor clay hills, or in damp sand, or in Leptospermum scrub.

L. laterale is variable in Australia (see Blake in Trans. roy. Soc. S. Aust. 67, 1943, 56) but all N.Z. specimens and plants seem fairly uniform, except that the panicle may vary somewhat in length and in amount of branching.

There is a specimen in the Armstrong collection at CANTY labelled "near Wellington", but no other specimens have been collected from as far south as this.