Flora of New Zealand Series

≡A. muelleri var. paludosa Hack. in Cheeseman Man. N.Z. Fl. 864  (1906); 

Lectotype: W 36804! T. F. C[heeseman] swamps in the Tasman Valley, Mt. Cook, alt. 2000 ft [Jan. 1897] (No 1110 to Hackel) (designated by Edgar and Forde 1991 op. cit. p. 152).

Small, finely rhizomatous tufts 3-5-(20) cm, with fine, pale green or blue-green, to light brown leaves, and narrowly branched, delicate panicles usually scarcely overtopping leaves; branching extravaginal at base, intravaginal above. Leaf-sheath ± hyaline, light green to light brown, glabrous, ribs few, prominent. Ligule 0.1-0.6 mm, truncate, minutely ciliate or erose, abaxially glabrous. Leaf-blade 0.8-2.5 cm × 0.2-0.4 mm diam., narrow-linear, involute, filiform, abaxially smooth except near blunt, minutely scabrid tip, adaxially usually finely scabrid on ribs. Culm slender, erect, internodes glabrous. Panicle 0.6-2-(3) cm, open, ovate to pyramidal, with few, minutely, sparsely ciliate branches each tipped by a single spikelet. Spikelets (1.2)-1.5-2 mm, pale green to light creamy brown, sometimes purplish. Glumes ± equal, and usually ≈ lemma, ovate-lanceolate, subobtuse, keel scabrid near tip, margins sometimes finely ciliate near tip. Lemma 1.2-1.8 mm, glabrous, faintly 5-nerved, ovate, obtuse or almost truncate, awnless. Palea 0.4-0.6 mm, ovate. Lodicules 0.2-0.4 mm. Callus glabrous. Anthers 0.4-0.7-(1) mm. Caryopsis c. 1 × 0.5 mm.

N.: central mountains; S.: mountains in Nelson, along Main Divide, and to the east, rare in Fiordland; St. Boggy ground, seepages in tussock grassland; montane to alpine, lowland in the south.

Endemic.

Larger plants of A. pallescens resemble very small forms of A. personata in shape of panicle, and number and size of spikelets; A. pallescens, however, has smooth lower leaf-sheaths, and subobtuse glumes slightly > lemma whereas in A. personata leaf-sheaths are often scabrid and the acute glumes are obviously > lemma.