Catapodium marinum
(L.) C.E.Hubb. Stiff Sand-grassCulms erect or spreading, to 20 cm long. Leaves glabrous; blade 1–10 cm long, 1–3.5 mm wide, blunt at apex, smooth on lower surface and margins, minutely scabrous along nerves of upper surface; ligule blunt, 0.5–3 mm long. Inflorescence usually a narrow, spike-like raceme, 0.5–7 cm long. Spikelets 4–10 mm long, 4–12-flowered; glumes subequal, 1.8–3.3 mm long; lemma 2.2–3 mm long, dorsally rounded in the lower part, keeled by the thickened mid-vein and slightly incurved toward the apex, more or less ovate in side-view, c. 1.5 mm broad when flattened out. Flowers Oct.–Jan.
GipP, OtP. Also Tas. Native to seashores of the Mediterranean, extending northward to The Netherlands. Known in Victoria from a single 1978 collection from a calcarite cliff at Point Nepean (near Portsea).
The Victorian specimen is slightly smaller in features of the spikelet than either Tasmanian or typical European specimens (suggesting C. rigidum) but agrees in other attributes with C. marinum.
Walsh, N.G. (1994). Poaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 2, Ferns and Allied Plants, Conifers and Monocotyledons, pp. 356–627. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
