Flora of New Zealand Series

sea couch

Bluish grey, tufted, rigid perennial, 35-125 cm, sometimes forming large patches from strongly spreading wiry rhizomes. Leaf-sheath glabrous, subcoriaceous, greyish to light brown, auricles 0.5-1-(1.5) mm, submembranous sometimes long hairy. Ligule c. 0.5 mm, scarious. Collar finely hairy. Leaf-blade 5-20 cm, usually tightly inrolled, sometimes flat and up to 7 mm wide, stiff, abaxially smooth, adaxially with prominent close-set scabrid ribs, tip acute, hard, margins scabrid. Culm 25-75 cm, erect, or geniculate below, internodes glabrous. Spike 5-20 × 0.5-1-(2) cm, erect, with spikelets very close-set, but 1-2 lowermost more distant; rachis with a few prickle-teeth on margins. Spikelets 10-20 mm, pale green, oblong or elliptic-oblong, 3-10-flowered, > internodes. Glumes ± equal, disarticulating, 7-12 mm, 5-7-nerved, lanceolate-oblong, obtuse or acute, coriaceous and very tough, scabrid on mid-nerve almost throughout or near tip. Lemma 7.5-11 mm, 5-nerved, coriaceous, lanceolate-oblong, keeled above, smooth apart from a few prickle-teeth on keel near tip, obtuse to subacute, often mucronate, rarely with fine straight awn to 7 mm. Palea ≤ lemma, keels finely, closely ciliate-scabrid, glabrous elsewhere except adaxially hairy apex. Callus c. 0.3 mm, glabrous. Rachilla to 1.5 mm, shortly stiff hairy. Lodicules 1.5 mm, triangular, shortly ciliate. Anthers 5-6 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 0.7-1.0 mm; stigma-styles 2.5-3 mm. Caryopsis 4-6 mm; embryo 0.5 mm.

N.: North Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Wellington (Waikanae, Wairarapa); S.: Canterbury (Avon R. Estuary). Coastal on foreshore waste land, consolidated sand near dunes, mudflats and roadsides.

Naturalised from western and southern Europe.