Order GRAMINE/E. 



6. AGROSTIS .EMULA. 



TOOTHED BENT GRASS. 



(Plate XXL) 



AGROSTIS FORSTERI, Roemer and Schultes. AGROSTIS LYALLII, Hook, 

 fil. Flora N.Z., I., 297. AGROSTIS LEPTOSTACHYS, Hook. fil. Flora 

 Antarct., L, 94. LACHNAGROSTIS FORSTERI, Trinius. LACHNAGROSTIS 

 ,*MULA, Nees. DEYEUXIA /EMULA, Kunth. AVENA FILIFORMIS, 

 Forster. DEYEUXIA FORSTERI, Kunth. Hook. fil. ; Flora N.Z., L, 

 298. AGROSTIS ^EMULA, Brown. Hook. fil. ; Handb. N.Z. Flora, L, 329. 



A VERY delicate glabrous grass, ascending to 2000 feet altitude. Flowers 

 November March. Root fibrous. Anuual. Culms tufted, 6 24 

 inches high. Leaves very narrow, involute, scaberulous on the edges ; 

 ligule narrow, oblong, lacerate at top. Panicle large, very open, branches 

 capillary, scaberulous, whorled, 3 6 inches long. Spikelets $ ^-inch 

 long, on very slender, scaberulous pedicels. Empty glumes nearly equal, 

 smooth ; keel scabrid, i -nerved. Flowering glume shorter, sessile, 

 truncate, with scattered silky hairs, 5-nerved, awn proceeding from the 

 middle of the back. Palea (when present) linear-oblong, bifid at top, 

 2-nerved, and frequently with the silky pedicel of a second glume at base. 

 Scales entire, narrow-lanceolate. Anthers short, stout. Styles very 

 short. Stigmas short, feathery. DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES: AUS- 

 TRALIA, TASMANIA, CAMPBELL ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND. 



A widely distributed grass in New Zealand, often forming a prominent part of 

 the pasture on dry, stony, or sandy soils, especially in the North Island. It is 

 valuable as a sheep grass in such places, probably proving perennial when pre- 

 vented by grazing from ripening its seed, the permanence of such grasses often 

 depending on their capability to stole or form offsets or branches at the roots before 

 flowering and seeding. This grass possesses a large adaptation of growth to varied 

 soils, although most abundant on arid clay land, probably from the absence there 

 of larger grasses ; yet, on good soil, when sheltered by shrubs, it attains its 

 greatest height, and is greedily eaten by horses and cattle. On several of the 

 smaller islands of the East Coast of Napier and Auckland, this grass, with its 

 congeners A. lillardieri and A. pllosa, form, when in flower, a prominent feature 



