Puccinellia antipoda

Detailed description

Erect, bluish green or light green to pale brownish green, stiff, dense, very leafy tufts, 65–250 mm, with uppermost leaves usually overtopping culms; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheaths straw-coloured to light grey-brown or greenish brown, smooth, firmly membranous, finely nerved; ligule 0.6–3.0 mm, obtuse or truncate, or sometimes tapered at centre and acute, smooth, entire; leaf-blades 50–250 mm long, folded and then 5–10 mm wide, or sometimes almost flat, underside smooth, upperside shallowly ridged and sparsely scabrous on ridges, margins scabrous, tip smooth, ± firmly acute, sometimes subobtuse and ± apiculate. Culms smooth, usually enclosed by sheaths. Panicle 25–80 × 4–15 mm, ± overtopped by leaves, linear-lanceolate, erect, contracted, dense; branches stiff, erect, sometimes ± spreading at maturity, smooth to sparsely scabrous, sharply acute-angled. Spikelets 3–9 mm, 2–5-flowered, bluish green or sometimes purplish. Glumes ± unequal, narrow-lanceolate to elliptic-oblong, subacute; lower glume 1.5–4.2 mm, 1–3-nerved; upper glume 2.4–5.0 mm, 3–5-nerved. Lemma 3–5 mm, 5–7-nerved, elliptic-oblong, midnerve slightly excurrent, apex subobtuse, ciliate scabrous, usually with a few hairs at base and on nerves near base, sometimes with hairs on nerves to c. ½ way. Palea < or occasionally = lemma, keels scabrous in upper ½, excurrent. Rachilla 0.8–1.8 mm. Anthers 0.6–1.5 mm. Seed 1.5–2.6 × 0.4–0.8 mm.