A very distinct species, easily recognised by the long and very slender red-brown spikelets, narrow entire glumes, and fusiform strongly ribbed long-beaked utricles.
50. C. Cockayniana, Kukenthal, MS.—Culms slender, trigonous, smooth or slightly scabrid, leafy, 1–2 ft. high. Leaves usually longer than the culms, ⅕–⅓ in. broad, flat, striate; margins scabrid above. Spikelets 5–8, 1½–3 in. long, about ¼ in. broad, usually remote but sometimes the upper approximate, bright red-brown or pale-brown; terminal one male, generally with female flowers at the top, which sometimes occupy quite one-half the spikelet; remainder all female, usually with male flowers at the base, all on filiform peduncles and nodding, or the upper almost sessile and erect; bracts long, leafy. Glumes ovate-lanceolate, entire or emarginate, membranous, red-brown; keel greenish, produced into a short awn. Utricles equalling the glumes or rather shorter than them, spreading when ripe, stipitate, narrow-elliptic, trigonous, strongly costate-nerved, pale yellow-brown, narrowed into a short stout minutely 2-toothed beak. Styles 3. Nut trigonous.—C. cinnamomea, Cheesem. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xiv. (1882) 301 (not of Olney). C. Forsteri, Cheesem. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xvi. (1884) 440 (in part).
South Island: Nelson—Graham River; sources of the Takaka River, T.F.C; Mount Kelvin (near Westport), Townson! Westland—Kelly's Hill, Petrie! Cockayne! Otago—Clinton Valley, Petrie! 500–4000 ft. November–January.
This differs from C. vaccilans in the stouter habit, broader leaves, thicker spikelets, and broader and shorter utricles, which want the slender deeply bifid beak of that species.
51. C. semi-Forsteri, C. B. Clarke MS. in Herb. Kew.—Culms tufted, stout or slender, trigonous, slightly scabrid above, 1–3 ft. high. Leaves longer or shorter than the culms, broad, ⅕–⅓ in. diam. or even more, flat, striate, often with a stout nerve on each side of the midrib; margins and midrib beneath sharply scabrid. Spikelets 5–9, distant or the upper 2–3 somewhat approximate, 1–3 in. long, ¼–⅓ in. broad, greenish or greenish-brown; terminal one male at the base with the upper half or sometimes three-quarters female; remainder all female, but usually with a few male flowers at the base, the uppermost subsessile, the rest pedunculate, the peduncle of the lowermost sometimes elongated; bracts very long and leafy. Glumes ovate-lanceolate, membranous, pale-ferruginous or whitish-green; midrib pale, produced into a short or long serrulate awn. Utricles longer or shorter than the glumes, spreading when ripe, elliptic-lanceolate, trigonous, nerved, greenish or greenish-brown; beak ½–¾ as long as the utricle, with 2 linear acute teeth. Styles 3. Nut obovoid-oblong, trigonous.—C. Forsteri, Boott, Ill. Car. t. 137 (not of Wahl.).
