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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

15. Sporobolus, R. Br

15. Sporobolus, R. Br.

Annual or perennial grasses, of very various habit. Leaves flat or convolute. Spikelets small, often minute, 1-flowered, awniess, arranged in a narrow spike-like or effuse panicle; rhachilla very short, obscurely jointed above the 2 outer glumes, not produced beyond the flower or very rarely, so. Glumes 3, membranous, nerveless or 1–3-nerved; 2 outer unequal, empty, persistent or separately deciduous; 3rd or flowering glume longer than or equalling the 2nd. Palea usually almost as long as the flowering glume, 2-nerved, often splitting between the nerves. Lodicules 2, small. Stamens 2–3. Styles short, distinct. Grain free within the flowering glume and palea; the pericarp lax, usually deciduous.

Species about 80, dispersed through the tropical and subtropical regions of both hemispheres, but most numerous in America.

1.S. indicus, R. Br. Prodr. 170.—Perennial: Culms tufted, stout, rigid, perfectly glabrous, 1–2 ft. high. Leaves mostly at the base of the culms and shorter than them, 4–12 in. long, 1/12–⅛ in broad, usually involute, tapering to a fine point, glabrous, margins smooth; sheaths pale, compressed, often ciliate on the margins; ligules reduced to a ciliate rim. Panicle erect, spike-like, very narrow, 3–9 in. long, sometimes interrupted below; branches short, crowded, erect and appressed to the rhachis. Spikelets very numerous, crowded, ½ in. long. Two outer glumes unequal, the lowest not much more than one-half the length of the 2nd, hyaline, nerveless, or the 2nd 1-nerved; 3rd or flowering glume nearly twice page 861as long as the 2nd, oblong-lanceolate, acute, 1–3-nerved. Palea almost as long as the flowering glume. Stamens usually 2. Grain obovoid or roughly quadrangular, reddish; pericarp thin.—Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 622. S. elongatus, R. Br. Prodr. 170; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 295; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 327; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t 18.

North and South Islands: Lowland districts from the North Cape to Nelson and Marlborough, abundant, especially in the northern part of the North Island. Ratstail.

A common grass in all warm countries. Although now presenting all the appearance of a true native, it is certainly introduced into New Zealand. Bishop Williams informs me that it made its first appearance at the Bay of Islands in 1840, shortly after the arrival of a ship called the "Surabayo," which, while on a voyage from Valparaiso to Sydney, laden with horses and forage, put into the Bay of Islands in a disabled state, and was there condemned and her cargo sold. Erigeron canadensis and other weeds appeared at the same time.