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Spikes or clusters all on rather long, slender, glabrous, or ciliate peduncles, within the 
last bract. 
Barren spikelets either reduced to a single several-nerved rigid glume, with a small 
hyaline one inside, or more developed, enclosing a male flower, the four involucral 
ones sessile. 
Fertile spikelets about 4 lines long. 
Rigid outer glumes, especially the lowest, densely villous with brown hairs. 
Awn long and rigid as in the two preceding species. 
Value as a fodder—Undoubtedly a valuable grass, chiefly for the 
dry country and dry tablelands. It is of a tussocky habit, and pro- 
duces a large quantity of palatable and nutritious food. 
Few men could have been better acquainted with this grass than 
O’Shanesy, but his account, which follows, is not very favourable ; he 
probably refers to the old growths :— 
“Tt is perennial, and grows in large tufts, but its foliage is very 
harsh, and, therefore, rejected by cattle as well as by the kangaroo.” 
Habitat and range.—¥ound in all the colonies except Tasmania. 
In New South Wales it prefers good soil and occurs from the table- 
land to the interior. 
4, Anthistiria membranacea, Lindl. 
Botanical name.—Membranacea, Latin, like parchment, in allusion 
to the translucency of the glumes. 
Vernacular names.—<‘ Landsborough Grass,” ‘‘ Barcoo Grass” (both 
named after Queensland localities), ““ Red Gulf Grass” (im allusion 
to its growth in the Gulf of Carpentaria country). 
Where figured.—Bailey. Agricultural Gazette. 
Botanical description (B. F1., vii, 543).—Quite glabrous, sometimes 
forming dense leafy tufts of 6 inches, the branching stems often 
elongated to 1 or 2 feet. 
Leaves flat, appearing almost articulate on the short, flat, prominently striate sheaths. 
Floral leaves or bracts with coriaceous sheaths and short lanceolate laminz. 
Panicies small, dense, almost cyme-like, as in Apluda, with very numerous small 
spikes or clusters, each subtended by a scarcely longer bract. 
Spikelets scarcely 2 lines long, glabrous, the four involucral ones pedicellate, the 
fertile one rather longer than the two pedicellate barren ones beside it. 
Glumes all thin, the outer one acute with several green nerves, the second with one 
or three nerves. 
Awn very fine, scarcely more than as long again as the spikelet. 
Value.as a fodder.—This is mainly a Queensland grass, and Bailey 
says of it :— 
“When under cultivation, it makes a dense intricate growth from 14 
feet to over 2 feet in depth, and being very leafy and full of seed 
should make good, nutritious hay. It is the rule to cut grass for hay 
when in flower, but with a grass like this, this rule cannot be strictly 
adhered to, for, from an early period of its life, it continues to flower 
and mature seed. When closely fed, it bears good seed on stems only 
2 or 3 inches high, and, although a tropical grass, has been found to 
thrive admirably in the Brisbane district. . . . Probablyno grass, 
indigenous or foreign, is so relished by stock. . . . It is very 
brittle when approaching maturity ; thus it is much broken by stock, 
a 
