Puccinellia walkeri

Detailed description

Erect, bluish green or light green to pale brownish green, stiff, dense, very leafy tufts, 95–500 mm, with uppermost leaves usually overtopping culms; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheaths straw-coloured to light greenish brown or grey-brown, sometimes purplish 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, undersides smooth, upper shallowly ridged and sparsely scabrous on ridges, margins scabrous, tip smooth, ± firmly acute, sometimes subobtuse and ± apiculate. Culms smooth, usually enclosed by sheaths. Panicle 30–170 × 5–110 mm, initially overtopped by leaves usually expanding well above them at maturity, linear-lanceolate, erect, contracted, dense; branches stiff, erect, acute-angled and scabrous, spreading at maturity. 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 2–5 mm, 3–5-nerved. Lemma 3–5 mm, 5–7-nerved, elliptic-oblong, apex subobtuse to obtuse, midnerve not excurrent, apex minutely ciliate-scabrous, otherwise with a few hairs on basal nerves and at base, sometimes with hairs on nerves to c. ½ way. Palea < or occasionally = lemma, keels scabrous in upper ½–⅔, reaching only to palea-tip. Rachilla 0.8–1.8 mm. Anthers 0.6–l.5 mm. Seed 1.5–2.6 × 0.4–0.8 mm.