Order GRAMINEiE. 
Genus Agrostis. 
Sub-Order Agrostide/E. 
8.—AGROSTIS BILLARDIERI. 
BILLARDIER’S BENT GRASS. 
{Plate XXIII.) 
Agrostis vaginata, Steudel. 
Lachnagrostis Billardieri, Trinius. 
Avena filiformis, Labill. Flora Nov. Holl., I., 24, t. 31. 
Deyeuxia Billardieri, Kunth. Hook, fil., FI. N.Z., II., 298. 
Agrostis Billardieri, R. Brown. Hook, fil., FI. Tasm., II., 115 ; Handb. N.Z. Flora, I., 329. 
A robust glabrous or scaberulous grass. Flowers December—March. Annual or Perennial. Culms 
tufted, 6—18 inches high. Leaves 6—10 inches long, broad or narrow, glabrous or pilose; ligule 
short, lacerate on the broad top. Farticle 4—8 inches long, open, branches long, whorled, scaberulous. 
Spikelets ^^ inch long, on long slender scaberulous pedicels. Empty glumes nearly equal, scabrid on 
the margins and keel, 3-nerved, lateral nerves very short. Flowering glume shorter, truncate, with 
4 teeth, silky at base, 5-nerved ; awn twice as long as the glume, proceeding from the middle of the 
back. Falea with a long silky pedicel at back. Scales linear-lanceolate, entire. Styles and Stigmas 
equal in length. Distribution of Species : AUSTRALIA, TASMANIA, NEW ZEALAND. 
This and the two previous species are closely connected, having many intermediate forms, but in 
the specific plants so structurally different as to be easily distinguished. The present species may be 
characterized as the smallest of the three in size, but largest in the details of the inflorescence. This 
species may also be considered as of much value in pasture, it is an early grass on the drier districts 
of the North Island, and has a very extensive range of growth and adaptation to circumstance of soil, 
moisture, and heat, growing with equal vigour in littoral swamps, on sand-hills, and good pasture land; 
it may also be found in waste places among stones or scrub, being annual on dry clay hills, and 
perennial on good moist land. 
In Vol. VII. of Bentham and Mueller’s “ Flora Australiensis,” recently published, some of the New 
Zealand Agrostis have been removed from that Genus and placed in Deyeuxia , from possessing a silky 
pedicel at the back of the palea. As this character is very inconstant with some of the New Zealand 
species, being very small in some, and frequently absent in A. cemula> it has been considered inexpedient 
in the present work to follow Bentham in this, and so to add a new Genus to the New Zealand grasses, 
or otherwise alter the present arrangement found in Hooker’s Handbook of the New Zealand Flora, as 
much confusion might ensue to those who refer to that work as a guide. Distribution in New 
Zealand. NORTH ISLAND: BAY OF ISLANDS AND AUCKLAND. EAST COAST— 
Sinclair, Colenso, Banks, and Solander. ISLANDS OF THE EAST COAST AND WEL¬ 
LINGTON—Buchanan. SOUTH ISLAND: NELSON—H. H. Travers; CANTERBURY— 
Armstrong ; DUNEDIN—Buchanan. 
Reference to Plate XXIII.: Fig. 1. Plant. 2. Spikelet. 3. Floret. 4. Nervation of empty 
glumes. 5. Nervation of flowering glume. 6. Nervation of Palea. 7. Scale. 8. Grain. 
