Also common in Australia and New Caledonia. It is a valuable plant for fixing the surface of moving sand-dunes.
9. EHRHARTA, Thunb.
Perennial or annual grasses, of very varied habit. Leaves flat or convolute. Spikelets laterally compressed, 1-flowered, pedicellate, arranged in a panicle or simple raceme; rhachilla disarticulating above the 2 lowest glumes, obscurely produced above the flower. Glumes 5; the 2 lowest short, empty; 3rd and 4th longer, awned, frequently hairy at the base, also empty, 4th the longest, often with a callus at its base; 5th or flowering glume shorter, thinner, never awned, usually with a callus or tuft of hairs at its base. Palea narrow, keeled, finely and closely 2-nerved. Stamens 6 in the great majority of the species, 2 only in the New Zealand ones. Styles short or rather long; stigmas plumose. Grain ovoid or elliptic, compressed, enclosed within the flowering glume and palea, but free from them.
A genus of 27 species, all but the two following natives of South Africa, one of them extending northwards to eastern tropical Africa and Arabia.
| Culms 6–18 in. Panicle 2–4 in., many-spiculate. Two lowest empty glumes acute | 1. E. Colensoi. |
| Culms 1–5 in. Raceme small, of 2–5 spikelets. Two lowest empty glumes broad, obtuse | 2. E. Thomsoni. |
1. E. Colensoi, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 288, t. 65a.—Culms numerous, tufted, branched at the base, glabrous, many-noded, 6–18 in. high. Leaves numerous, distichous, suberect, the upper ones 4–6 in. long by ⅙–⅕ in. broad, flat, faintly nerved, glabrous, tapering from the base to a slender point, the lowermost with the blades much reduced in size and almost scale-like; ligules very short, jagged; sheaths short, close, firm, thin, striate, glabrous. Panicles contracted, inclined or drooping, 1½–4 in. long; rhachis slender, smooth; branches short, suberect, in small specimens sometimes reduced to single spikelets. Spikelets compressed, linear-oblong, about ¼ in. long; pedicels short, slender. Two lowest glumes about half the length of the 3rd and 4th respectively, acuminate, 3–5-nerved; 3rd and 4th narrower, awned, silky-hairy at the base, 5–7-nerved. Flowering glume shorter than the 4th and about equal to the 3rd, oblong, obtuse, glabrous. Palea linear; rhachilla produced behind it as a minute appendage.—Handb. N.Z. Fl. 319; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 1.
North Island: Ruahine Mountains, Colenso! H. Hill! Petrie! Mount Egmont, T.F.C.; Tararua Mountains, H. H. Travers! South Island: Nelson—Mount Arthur, Mount Owen, T.F.C.; Mount Rochfort, Mount Faraday, Townson! Canterbury and Westland—Mountains above Arthur's Pass, T.F.C.; Kelly's Hill, Petrie! Otago—Clinton Saddle, Lake Te Anau, Petrie! 3000–5500 ft.
