slender, glabrous. Leaves 3–4 inches long, involute, filiform, rigid, setaceous; secund on the outer culms, glabrous; ligule none; sheaths broad, with long silky hairs at mouth; panicle 1–.½ inches long; spikelets 3–4 on short pilose pedicels 6–7 lines long, 4–7 flowered. Flowers unisexual; empty glumes unequal, oblong lanceolate; flowering glumes not included 4–5 lines long; hispid on the margins, and with long silky hairs at base and on sides, deeply bifid; awn one half longer than glume, recurved, flattened, and twisted like a corkscrew; scale fimbriate on the top.

This grass is found at considerable altitudes, and covered by the snows of winter during several months in the year; it forms a very coarse herbage for sheep, although like other species, of the genus, the early growth of spring is more grateful and nutritious; the close compacted mass of stems, leaf sheaths and roots, in this and other Danthoniœ become blanched and succulent, and are relished much by wild pigs, which root them up; this food is also extensively eaten by rats, which swarm on the grass lands of the South Island, and are vegetable feeders in those districts.

Collected by J. Buchanan, on the Kaikoura Mountains, and by H. H. Travers, near Lake Guyon, Nelson.