Rytidosperma racemosum (R.Br.) Connor & Edgar APNI* Synonyms: Austrodanthonia racemosa (R.Br.) H.P.Linder APNI*
Description: Variable, erect, rather slender, caespitose perennial to c. 0.6 m high.
Culms slender, glabrous, smooth, mostly 3-noded. Sheaths striate, more or less glabrous; ligule reduced to very short cilia, 0.25 mm long; blade fine, narrow, usually closely inrolled, 5–15 cm long, shallowly grooved, almost glabrous to more or less pilose, very finely and obsurely scabrous on the inner surface.
Inflorescence much exserted, 5–15 cm long, few- many-flowered, linear, the branches laxly spreading at anthesis when fresh. Spikelets 6–10-flowered, pale greensih to straw coloured, the groupd of florets usually exceeding the glumes. Glumes with membranous margins, 5–7-nerved, 7–16 mm long. Lemmas 3.5–5.5 mm long, linear to oblanceolate when folded, pilose, pale; lateral lobes often broad, narrowing abruptly into fine setae, variable in length, or awnless; central awn much exserted, brown and twisted in the lower part, straight above; palea elliptic, glabrous on the back.
Distribution and occurrence: Grows in grassland, woodland and forest.
NSW subdivisions: CC, NT, CT, ST, SWS
Other Australian states: Qld
Text by Louisa Murray
Taxon concept: Jacobs, S.W.L., Whalley, R.D.B. & Wheeler, D.J.B. Grasses of New South Wales, Fourth Edition (2008).
| | Key to the varieties | |
| 1 | Lateral lobes of the lemma long-aristate, c. equal in length to the expanded part of the lobe, >2 mm long | var. racemosum |
| Lateral lobes of the lemma very obtuse or obtusely truncate, without points, or narrowed abruptly and excentrically into short points less than 1 mm long | var. obtusatum |
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