Poa cookii is a deep green, perennial, gynomonoecious grass growing as densely clumped tussocks up to 800 mm in height, with the fibres from older leaf-sheaths forming a tangled mass at the base of the plant. It is a smaller plant than Poa foliosa with which it may grow. The grass flowers from November to February.[2][3]
Distribution and habitat
The grass is found on the Prince Edward, Crozet, Heard and Kerguelen Islands of the southern Indian Ocean, as well as on Australia's Macquarie Island. On Heard it occupies moist and sandy areas along the shore and on peat flats with the cushion plantAzorella selago. On Macquarie it grows on rocky areas along the coast up to 200 m above sea level, on flats and slopes on wet peat and along the edges of creeks, often flourishing in the nutrient-rich soil near penguincolonies where it has a competitive advantage over the dominant Poa foliosa. On the Prince Edward Islands Poa cookii is eaten by caterpillars of the native moth Embryonopsis halticella.[4] On Macquarie it has been severely affected by rabbitgrazing.[2][3]
References
^Hooker, J.D. (1879). "Enumeration of the plants hitherto collected in Kerguelen Isalnd [sic] by the "Antarctic," "Challenger," and "British Transit of Venus" expenditions - I. - Flowering plants, ferns, lycopodiaceæ, and churaceæ". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 168: 22. doi:10.1098/rstl.1879.0004. S2CID186212975.
