Centrolepis ciliata (Hook.f.) Druce

Perennial cushion, 5–100 mm high. Stems ascending, branching. Leaves crowded, obscurely distichous, cauline and imbricate, weakly spreading to erect. Leaf-sheath 2.5–6 mm long, scarious, with multicellular hispid hairs. Leaf-sheath auricles lobed or absent; ligulate, sometimes minute or occasionally pilose. Leaf-lamina 2.5–23 × 0.4–0.7 mm, subulate, with an acute or acicular apex, terete to faintly channelled, glabrous or with pilose hairs below. Uppermost leaf, leaf-like or reduced to a membranous cataphyll. Flowering stems 3.5–20 mm long, glabrous. Inflorescence a compressed ellipsoid to oblong spike, 2.6–5 × 1–1.5 mm. Outer primary floral bract 2.6–5 mm long, elliptic and contracting to an incurved or straight foliar point; papillate. Inner floral bract, 2–4 mm long, elliptic to oblong contracting to an incurved or straight foliar point; papillate. Primary bracts separated by an internode 0.2–0.8 mm long. Secondary hyaline scales present, 1/reproductive unit. Reproductive units/spike 2–3(–5) all bisexual or 1–2 bisexual the rest female. Androecium 1 stamen; filament capillary, 3–7 mm long; anthers fusiform, 0.96–1.6 mm long. Gynoecium, 1–2–(3) connate, superposed carpels. Styles stigmatic with branched papillae, crimson. Seeds 0.75–1 × 0.3–0.5 mm, ellipsoid, yellow to yellow-brown or brown, striated.

Distinguished from the two other cushion bog centrolepids with which it can occur, Centrolepis pallida and Gaimardia setacea, by hairy leaf-sheaths, both primary inflorescence bracts contracted to mucronate foliar points, and the presence of secondary hyaline scales within the primary floral bracts.

Montane to alpine bogs, flushes, turfs, tarn edges, pakihi and wet heathlands to 1600 m a.s.l., descending to sea-level in the south and west of the South Island in lowland pakihi, peat bogs and oligotrophic swamps.

Flowering: Nov.-Jan.

Plants on the New Zealand mainland have inflorescence bracts with distinctive incurved foliar points whereas plants from the Auckland and Campbell islands have foliar points more-or-less straight.