.jpg)
Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
13. Echinopogon, Beauv
13. Echinopogon, Beauv.
An erect or ascending glabrous grass. Leaves flat. Spikelets 1-flowered, crowded in a short and dense spike-like panicle; rhachilla disarticulating above the 2 outer glumes, produced beyond the flower into a short bristle. Glumes 3; 2 outer subequal, persistent, empty, awnless, keeled, acute; 3rd or flowering glume page 859broad, thin, 5-nerved, 3-lobed at the tip, the lateral lobes short and acute, the middle one produced into a straight stiff awn. Palea shorter than the flowering glume, narrow, 2-nerved. Lodicules 2. Stamens 3. Styles distinct; stigmas shortly plumose. Grain free within the flowering glume.
The genus is confined to the following species, which has a wide range in Australia as well as in New Zealand.
| 1. | E. ovatus, Beauv. Agrost. 42, t. 9.—Culms laxly tufted, decumbent at the base, erect above, slender, stiff, minutely scabrid above, 9–24 in. high. Leaves 1–6 in. long, ⅛–¼ in. broad, flat, striate, margins and both surfaces harsh and scabrid; sheaths rather long, closely appressed, deeply striate, scabrid with reversed projections; ligule short, membranous, lacerate. Spike-like panicle varying in size from ½–1½ in. long, ovoid-globose to narrow-oblong, bristling with the long awns; branches short, densely packed. Spikelets compressed, 1/10–⅛ in. long without the awns. Two outer glumes subequal, lanceolate, acute, sharply keeled, keel very prominent, green, ciliate; 3rd or flowering glume equalling or slightly exceeding the empty glumes, broad, furnished at the base with a pencil of silky hairs, awn rigid, scabrous, ¼–⅓ in. long. Palea linear-oblong, 2-nerved, with a hairy bristle-like continuation of the rhachilla at its back.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 298; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 325; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 599; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 13b. Agrostis ovata, Forst. Prodr. n. 40; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 128; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 247; Raoul, Choix, 39. China ovata, Kunth, Enum. i. 208. Hystericina alopecuroides, Steud. Syn. Pl. Gram. 35.
North and South Islands: Not uncommon in dry places throughout. Sea-level to 2500 ft. |