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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
27. Kœleria, Pers
27. Kœleria, Pers.
Perennial or annual grasses. Leaves narrow; ligules hyaline. Spikelets 2–5-flowered with, the uppermost flower sterile, laterally compressed, shining, densely crowded in spike-like panicles; rhachilla disarticulating above the outer glumes and between the flowering glumes, produced beyond the uppermost flower. Two outer glumes persistent, empty, unequal, keeled, acute or acuminate, margins hyaline. Flowering glumes exceeding the outer glumes, with broader hyaline margins, 3–5-nerved, entire or bifid, acuminate or mucronate or shortly awned. Palea white and hyaline, 2-toothed. Lodicules 2. Stamens 3. Styles short, distinct; stigmas plumose. Grain oblong, laterally compressed, free within the flowering glume and palea.
Species 12 or 15, mainly in the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, rarer in the south temperate zone. The single New Zealand species is also found in South America.
| 1. | K. Kurtzii, Hack, in Bolet. Acad. Sc. de Cordoba, xvi. (1900) 261.—Culms densely tufted, erect, rather slender, glabrous or pubescent, 6–24 in. high. Leaves crowded near the base of the culms, 2–9 in. long, ⅙–⅛ in. broad, flat, soft or almost flaccid, glabrous or more or less pubescent, sometimes almost villous; sheaths long, rather tight, striate, pubescent or villous; ligules short, truncate, ciliolate. Panicle 1–5 in. long, cylindric, usually dense and spike-like, but sometimes irregularly interupted or lobed; branches short, erect, minutely villous-pubescent. Spikelets pale-green or pale purplish-green, shining, about ⅕ in. long, 2–3-flowered. Two outer glumes broadly hyaline, acute, 3-nerved, often scabrid on the keel. Flowering glumes oblong-lanceolate, glabrous or minutely rough on the back, 5-nerved, tip minutely 2-toothed or almost entire, with a very short scabrid awn inserted just below the teeth.—K. cristata, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 305; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 334; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 38 (not of Pers.).K. micrathera, Griseb. in Goett. Abh. xxi. (1879) 292 (but notTrisetum micra-therum, Desv.).
South Island: Abundant in hilly and mountainous localities throughout. Sea-level to 4500 ft. Also in temperate South America (Argentina), and probably also in Australia. Professor Hackel distinguishes it from the northern K. cristata by the 29—Fl. page 898flowering glume being minutely 2-toothed at the apex with a short awn protruding from below the sinus, whereas in K. cristata the flowering glume is entire and not awned. I find that the awn varies much in length, and is frequently almost obsolete. |