Flora of New Zealand Series

Robust tufts, 0.6-1.2- (2) m high. Stems sharply 3-angled with very sharply scabrid leaves. Leaves and sheaths with evident minute transverse septa between veins. Involucral bracts many, much > inflorescence. Inflorescence usually a simple umbel; rays 6-12, unequal. Spikelets crowded at end of each ray into dense spikes ± 5 cm long. Glumes hard, shining, usually purple-brown.

K., N., S. Nelson; Westland; Fiordland - Poison Bay, George Sound; Canterbury - near Motukarara, Rakaia River mouth (reported from Banks Peninsula). Ch. Lowland near rivers and in damp ground, especially near the coast.

The endemic, tall, robust, C. ustulatus is distinctive in its broad, harshly serrate, minutely septate leaves, and dark red-brown shining glumes. The coarse, stiff, sharply serrate leaves cause it to be called "cutty grass", a descriptive common name which unfortunately is non-specific and widely applied to species of Carex, Cortaderia, Gahnia, and Festuca arundinacea.

It occurs in damp places on flats, about swamps, streams and rivers, and in gullies and seepages on hill country, varying in abundance from scattered clumps to large communities. It is also a persistent unpalatable weed of pastures on damp soils in some localities, and the large clumps with often massive crown and root ball can be a problem when wet lands are developed for agriculture.