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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

14. Alopecurus, Linn

14. Alopecurus, Linn.

Annual or perennial grasses. Leaves flat. Spikelets strongly laterally compressed, 1-flowered, densely crowded in a cylindric spike-like panicle, articulated on the top of the very short pedicels. Glumes 3; the 2 outer subequal, often connate below, sharply keeled, acute or obtuse, not awned, often fringed on the keels; 3rd or flowering glume about as long as the outer glumes, convolute, hyaline, usually with a slender bent dorsal awn. Palea generally wanting. Lodicules absent. Stamens 2 or 3. Styles distinct or connate. Grain laterally compressed, free within the flowering glume and palea.

Species about 20, in the temperate and cool regions of both hemispheres, several of them excellent fodder-grasses. The single New Zealand species is widely distributed.

1.A. geniculatus, Linn. Sp. Plant. 60.—Culms creeping and rooting at the base, erect above, rather slender, glabrous, 9–18 in. page 860high. Leaves short, soft, flat, ⅛–⅙ in. broad; upper sheaths long, grooved, more or less inflated; ligules long, membranous. Spike 1–2 in. long, ¼–⅓ in. broad, dense, cylindric, greenish-yellow; branches short, the ultimate ones bearing a single spikelet. Spikelets numerous, closely imbricating, much compressed., 1/10–⅛ in. long. Two outer glumes slightly connate at the base, obtuse or subacute, membranous, pubescent, ciliate along the keel; 3rd or flowering glume rather shorter than the empty ones, thin, convolute, truncate and erose at the tip; awn slender, not twice the length of the glume, almost basal, straight or recurved. Anthers linear, orange-yellow.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 290; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 321; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 555; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 5.

North Island: Auckland—Lower Waikato, H. Carse! East Cape district, Bishop Williams! Hawke's Bay—Colenso! Wellington—Wairarapa, Buchanan! near Wellington, Kirk! South Island: Not uncommon in marshy places throughout. Sea-level to 3500 ft. Marsh Foxtail.

An abundant grass in marshy places in most temperate regions. The allied species A. pratensis (Meadow Foxtail) and A. agrestis (Slender Foxtail), descriptions of which will be found in any British flora, have become naturalised in several localities in both Islands.