Potamophila parviflora R.Br. APNI*
Description: Tall, tufted, reed-like, aquatic perennials with glabrous culms to 1.5 m tall.
Ligule membranous, 5–15 mm long; blade rolled in bud, erect, linear, flat or loosely inrolled, to 50 cm long, 4–6 mm wide, firm, lightly scabrous above.
Inflorescence a narrow, loosely contracted panicle, 15–45 cm long, 1–2 cm wide, the main axis angular, woolly-hairy at the nodes. Spikelets 3–5.5 mm long, on slender pedicels, disarticulating above the glumes, glabrous; florets 3, the lower 2 reduced and sterile, the upper bisexual. Glumes reduced to a minute, membranous cup remaining on the pedicel after spikelets fall. Sterile lemmas scale-like, slightly unequal. Fertile lemma obtuse to acute, awnless, membranous, prominently 5-nerved, the nerves somewhat raised; palea equal to or slightly exceeding the lemma, 3-nerved, membranous.
Flowering: Flowers in summer.
Distribution and occurrence: Grows in or beside north coast river beds.
NSW subdivisions: NC, NT
Text by Jacobs, S.W.L., Whalley, R.D.B. & Wheeler, D.J.B. Taxon concept: Grasses of New South Wales, Fourth Edition (2008).
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