lobes produced into fine awns often as long as the glume, central awn from between the lobes, usually exserted beyond the spikelet, flat and spirally twisted at the base, a ring of short silky hairs around the glume at the base, and a transverse ring of longer hairs (often arranged in separate tufts) just below the base of the lobes. Palea exceeding the base of the awn, narrow-oblong.—Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 304; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 333; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 595; Buch. N.Z. Grasses, t. 34. D. unarede, Raoul, Choix, 11, t. 4. D. gracilis, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 303, t. 69b.
Var. setifolia, Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 304.—Culms more densely tufted. Leaves very narrow, terete from the strongly involute margins, strict, wiry, erect. Panicle smaller, with fewer spikelets. Flowering glumes less copiously silky, the hairs of the upper transverse band shorter.—D. semiannularis var. alpina, Buch. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. iv. (1872) 225; N.Z. Grasses, t. 34(2)a.
North and South Islands, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands: Abundant throughout, var. setifolia in mountainous situations. Sea-level to 4500 ft.
Also abundant throughout the whole of temperate Australia. In New Zealand this species and D. pilosa are now largely sown as pasture grasses, especially in the northern part of the colony. On stiff clay soils they are far more permanent than most introduced species, and might with advantage be substituted for them.
12. D. Buchanani, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 333.—Culms tufted, slender, smooth, quite glabrous, 3–12 in. high. Leaves mostly at the base of the stems and much shorter than them, strict, erect, wiry, very narrow, involute, filiform or nearly so; sheaths pale, glabrous, deeply grooved; ligules reduced to a band of short white hairs. Panicle small, contracted, ¾–2 in. long, of 4–12 spikelets; branches few, scaberulous. Spikelets pale-green, ¼–⅓ in. long, 3–5-flowered. Two outer glumes exceeding the flowering glumes and often the awns as well, subequal, oblong-lanceolate, acute, 3–5-nerved. Flowering glumes 7–9-nerved, 2-lobed at the tip, the lobes produced into short awns, central awn from between the lobes, short, hardly equalling the length of the glume, straight or bent, not at all or very obscurely twisted at the base, a tuft of silky hairs at the base of the glume and on the margins higher up, usually connected by straggling hairs on the back and sides, forming an indistinct transverse ring. Palea oblong, 2-nerved; nerves ciliate.
South Island: Canterbury—Upper Waimakariri, Kirk! Petrie! T.F.C.; Mount Torlesse, Petrie! Otago—Lake district, Hector and Buchanan! Kurow, Mount Ida, Macrae's, Pembroke, Bendigo, Lake Te Anau, Petrie! 1000–3000 ft.
Very closely allied to D. semiannularis, with which Professor Hackel is disposed to unite it. But the spikelets are smaller, the awns shorter, often not exserted beyond the outer glumes, and the flowering glume is shorter and broader, and more sparingly silky. The plant figured by Mr. Buchanan in his New Zealand Grasses (t. 35) as Danthonia Buchanani is a slender form of Hierochlœ redolens.
