Kermadec Islands: Cliffs on the north side of Sunday Island, abundant. T.F.C., Miss Shakespear!
Closely allied to I. exaltata, Brong., but a much smaller plant, with a smaller and less branched panicle, larger and broader spikelets on more clavate pedicels, and with the outer glume 5-nerved.
2. ZOYSIA, Willd.
Small perennial creeping grasses. Culms branched at the base, rigid, erect. Leaves distichous, subulate, often pungent-pointed. Spikelets few, ovoid, 1-flowered, sessile or shortly pedicelled, not distichous, jointed on and closely appressed along a rigid notched unjointed rhachis, forming a short spike. Glumes 2; the outer one empty, broad, convolute, coriaceous, shining and nerveless; the inner flowering one included within the outer and much smaller than it, membranous, hyaline. Palea still smaller, short, nerveless, hyaline, sometimes wanting. Lodicules wanting. Stamens 3. Styles long, distinct; stigmas elongate. Grain free, enclosed within the hardened outer glume.
A small genus of 2 or 3 closely related species, found on the shores of southern and eastern Asia, Mauritius, Australia, and New Zealand.
1. Z. pungens, Willd. in Ges. Naturf. Fr. Neue Schr. iii. (1801) 441.—Rhizome long, creeping, branched, rigid and wiry. Culms numerous from the rhizome, often branched at the base, erect, rigid, glabrous, usually from 1 to 3 in. high, but sometimes taller and attaining 4–6 in. or even more. Leaves more or less spreading, subulate, flat or convolute, coriaceous; sheaths short, grooved, tipped with a few cilia; ligule wanting. Spike terminal, ⅛–¾ in. long; spikelets usually 3–5, but in small specimens often reduced to one, and in large ones sometimes as many as 7–9. Outer glume smooth and shining, convolute, coriaceous, tip often produced into a short awn. Flowering glume thin and hyaline, included within the outer glume.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 312; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 324; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 506; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 13a. Rottboella uniflora, A. Cunn. Precur. n. 267; Raoul, Choix, 39.
North and South Islands: Abundant on sandy shores from the North Cape to Banks Peninsula and Okarito, less common in dry places inland, ascending to 2000 ft. at Lake Taupo and in Canterbury and Otago. Also not uncommon on the shores of Australia and Tasmania, extending northwards to India, Malacca, and China.
3. PASPALUM, Linn.
Annual or perennial grasses, of various habit. Spikelets 1-flowered, orbicular or oblong, obtuse or rarely acute, not awned, sessile or very shortly pedicelled, arranged in one or two rows on one side of a slender spike; spikes solitary, binate, digitate, or panicled. Glumes 3; 2 outer empty, membranous, usually subequal or rarely
