North Island: Mount Hikurangi, Petrie! Mount Egmont, Buchanan! T.F.C.; Tararua Mountains, Buchanan! Townson! South Island, Stewart Island: Abundant in damp alpine and subalpine localities. 2500–6500 ft.
Separated without any difficulty from P. foliosa, with which it was placed by Hooker, by the different habit, much smaller size, shorter narrower and smoother leaves, smaller and proportionately broader panicle, and less prominently nerved flowering glumes, which are less silky at the base, and almost smooth above.
3. P. litorosa, Cheesem.—Perennial, densely tufted, perfectly smooth and polished. Culms numerous, branched at the base, erect, quite glabrous, 6–24 in. high. Leaves usually longer than the culms, very narrow, linear-filiform, gradually narrowed upwards into an almost pungent point, closely involute, terete, rigid and coriaceous, faintly striate; sheaths long, tight, smooth; ligules ovate, membranous. Panicle rather small, 1–3 in. long, ovate to ovate-oblong or linear-oblong, rather dense, erect or inclined, sparingly branched; branches short, simple or divided, scaberulous. Spikelets much compressed, ovate-oblong, ¼–⅓ in. long, 3–7-flowered. Two outer glumes slightly unequal, keeled, not half as long as the spikelet, broadly lanceolate, acuminate, 3–5-nerved. Flowering glumes ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, keeled, prominently 5-nerved, sometimes with short crisped hairs on the callus and lower part of the keel, but frequently without them, the whole of the glume densely minutely scabrid. Palea about ¼ shorter than the glume, linear-oblong, bidentate, ciliate-scabrid on the keels. Stamens 3; anthers long, ⅔ the length of the palea.—Festuca scoparia, Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. i. 98; Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 308; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 841; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 55a.
South Tsland: Otago—Abundant on the cliffs of the east and southern coasts, from Port Chalmers southwards, Lyall, Kirk! Petrie! H. J. Matthews! Stewart Island, The Snares, Auckland and Campbell Islands, Antipodes Island: Plentiful on rocks near the sea.
A very distinct species, with a good deal of the habit and appearance of small states of Festuca littoralis, which no doubt induced Sir J. D. Hooker to place it in the same genus. But it has the keeled flowering glumes and punctiform hilum of Poa; and, as Professor Hackel has pointed out to me, must be transferred to that genus. As there is already a Poa scoparia (Kunth, Rev. Gram. ii. 535) a new name is required. Hooker describes the flowering glume as "basi longe villoso barbata," but it is frequently quite free from hairs.
4. P. ramosissima, Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. i. 101.—Culms densely tufted, decumbent at the base for 6–12 in., simple, brown, rigid, many-noded, naked or clothed with the remains of the old leaves; upper portion ascending and much fasciculately branched; branches slender, flaccid, leafy, 2–4 in. long. Leaves longer than the culms, narrow, 112–16 in. broad, flat, flaccid, quite smooth and glabrous, obsoletely nerved; sheaths long, slender, striate; ligules oblong, truncate. Panicle narrow, erect, green, 1–2 in. long, ⅓ in. broad;
