Pete ie.- — Description of a New Native Grass. 423 



Vrt. XLIX. — Description of a New Native Grass. 



By D. Petrie, M.A. 

 [Read before the Auckland Institute, 9th October, 1905.] 



Poa astoni, sp. nov. 



A grass growing on coast cliffs, densely tufted, 15 in. high 

 or less, with leaves equalling or exceeding the culms. Leaf- 

 sheaths broad, compressed, thin, striate, glabrous, pale, con- 

 tinued at the edges and front into a rigid broadly triangular 

 acute ligule. Leaf-blades filiform, involute, striate, glabrous, 

 suddenly narrowed from the back of the sheath, the point of 

 origin being marked by a joint ; in age deciduous at the joint. 

 In smaller forms the blades are shorter, more rigid, and almost 

 acicular. Culms slender, few- jointed, striate, the joints short and 

 constricted ; uppermost leaf on culm long-sheathing. Panicle 

 ovate or ovate-oblong, compact, 2| in. long or less ; panicle- 

 branches 4 or fewer, terete, glabrous, swollen below the in- 

 sertion of the spikelets. Spikelets crowded at the tips of 

 the panicle-branches, pale, shining, shortly stalked, £ in. long, 

 5-6-flowered, flowers all sessile. Outer glumes half as long 

 as the spikelets, pale and shining, nearly equal, broadly lance- 

 olate, acuminate, glabrous, 3-nerved for two-thirds of their 

 length. Flowering-glumes glabrous or finely pubescent, strongly 

 5-nerved, acuminate, the midrib delicately scabrid or almost 

 glabrous, ciliate at the margins, with a scanty tuft of long hairs 

 at the bottom of the back ; this tuft sometimes absent. Palea 

 2-nerved, nerves ciliate, bifid at the top. 



Hab. Eocky cliffs and reefs on the coast of Otago and Stewart 

 Island — at Brighton, Taieri Mouth, Catlin's River, Waikawa, 

 Bluff, and Paterson's Inlet ; also at the Auckland Islands (fide 

 T. Kirk, who contributed specimens from there to Mr. Cheese- 

 man's herbarium). 



Sir 3. D. Hooker's Festuca scoparia, described in the " Flora 

 Antarctica," appears to include two distinct grasses, the present 

 grass and one that is confined to the southern off- islands, where 

 it forms the principal coastal and upland tussock-grass on the 

 Auckland, Campbell, and Antipodes Islands. As many of the 

 characters contained in Hooker's description apply only to the 

 latter, I conclude that it was the off -island tussock- grass that 

 be meant to distinguish as Festuca scoparia. 



Hackel recognised that Festuca scoparia was a true Poa. 

 Cheeseman, who agreed with this view, has accordingly named 



