Description
Key Characters:
Growth Form:
Perennial herbs with branched stolons.
Stems:
Roots:
Roots fibrous.
Leaves:
Leaves simple.
Alternate.
Blades linear to linear-lanceolate, up to 15 cm long, 2-10 mm wide.
Apex acute.
Surfaces usually glaucous, stiff, flat or involute, glabrous or pilose toward base.
Margins scabrous.
Veins parallel.
Flowers:
Spikes straight or slightly curved, 3-20 cm long, glaucous, glabrous, with internodes 3-7.5 mm long; spikelets 1-flowered, (8-)10-14 (-22) mm long, the terminal one up to 28 mm long, rachilla prolonged behind palea; second glume narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate or subulate, closely 8-12-nerved, smooth or minutely scaberulous, apex acute or acuminate, usually tipped with a rigid awn.
Lemmas coriaceous, ovate or ovate-oblong, 4-5.5 mm long, minutely pubescent at base and scaberulous on upper 1/2, apex obtuse, pubescent; palea coriaceous, lanceolate to narrowly ovoid, ca. 5 mm long, 2-nerved, glabrous, apex acute, pubescent.
Fruit:
Caryopsis pale brown; oblong to obovate; ca. 2 mm long; dorsally compressed.
Ploidy:
Habitat:
Occurring on coastal sands above the high-water mark.
Elevation Range:
Island Status
Mokupāpapa (Kure atoll) Indigenous
Ni'ihau(Incl. Lehua) Indigenous
Kuaihelani (Midway Atoll) Indigenous
Manawai (Pearl & Hermes Atoll) Indigenous
Kapou(Lisianski Island) Indigenous
Kamole(Laysan Island) Indigenous
Lalo (French Frigate Shoals) Indigenous