Order GRAMINE^. 



1 AGROSTTS ANTARCTICA. 



CAMPBELL ISLAND BENT GRASS. 



AGROSTIS ANTARCTICA, Hook. fil. Flora Antarct, II., 374. AGROSTIS 

 ANTARCTICA, Hook, fil., Handb. N.Z. Flora, 1,327. 



Culms erect, tufted, 6 24 inches rrgh, glabrous and smooth. Leaves 

 involute, shorter than the culms ; sheaths glabrous, smooth ; ligule 

 oblong, truncate. Panicle i 4 inches long, contracted, nodding, pale 

 green. Spikelets crowded on short, erect, hispid pedicels, ^-inch long 

 and upwards. Empty glumes nearly equal, lanceolate, long-acuminate ; 

 keel ciliate, sides scaberulous ; flowering one sessile, half the length of 

 the empty, or shorter, glabrous, membranous, truncate ; awn from the 

 middle of the back, rather recurved, longer than the spikelet. Palea o, 

 or small. -DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES; CAMPBELL ISLAND. 



There is no specimen of this grass in the Colonial Herbarium, and it cannot 

 therefore be figured. Hooker says of this grass, Fl. Antarct., I., 95: "This is 

 not an uncommon grass at the bases of precipices and on the exposed slopes of the 

 island. It is remarkable for being nearly allied to a species brought by Dr. Jameson 

 from the extreme verge of vegetation on Pichincha, in Columbia, 15,676 feet 

 altitude, for me ; that species is, however, more leafy, and its whole culm is 

 enclosed in the sheathing vaginae." 



