Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/805

Kyllinga.] Common in most warm countries, and possibly only naturalised in New Zealand. It is very closely allied to the equally abundant K. monocephala, to which I formerly referred it, but which can be distinguished by the glume of the fertile flower having the upper part of the keel winged or crested and more or less glandular.

Annual or more commonly perennial herbs. Stems erect, simple below the inflorescence. Leaves at the base of the stem, usually long, the lowest sometimes reduced to sheaths. Inflorescence umbellate or capitate, often large and compound; bracts at the base long, leaf-like, spreading. Spikelets oblong or linear, compressed; rhachilla persistent. Glumes usually many, distichous; the two lowest empty; four at least and generally many of the succeeding ones hermaphrodite and fruit-bearing, falling away from the rhachilla one by one, commencing with the lowest; the uppermost 1–3 sterile or empty. Stamens 2–3, rarely 1. Style continuous with the ovary, not thickened at the base; branches 3, filiform. Nut triquetrous or plano-convex, the flat face against the rhachilla, surface smooth.

1. C. tenellus, Linn. f. Suppl. 103.—A small densely tufted annual. Stems numerous, very slender, almost filiform, 1–3 in, high. Leaves few, much shorter than the stem, filiform. Spikelets 1–3 together, digitate, much flattened, oblong, obtuse, large for the size of the plant, ⅙–¼ in. long; bracts 2, setaceous, one erect and continuous with the stem, the other much smaller. Glumes 10–25, regularly distichous, ovate, obtuse or mucronate, boatshaped, conspicuously 5–9-nerved, varying in colour from almost white to red-brown. Stamens 1 or 2. Style-branches 3, linear. Nut rather more than half the length of the glume, elliptical, acutely trigonous, smooth.—''Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 745; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' vii. 265; C. B. Clarke in Fl. Cap. vii. 164.