Description: Perennials with stout, woody rhizome. Culms transversely septate, longitudinally unitubulose, hollow between the septa.
Leaves basal, reduced to bladeless sheaths, open with overlapping margins.
Inflorescence spikelet-like, pseudolateral, with numerous spirally arranged pseudospikelets; lowest involucral bract erect, culm-like. Pseudospikelets with glumes of three types: lowest glume broad, slightly curved, nerveless, thick-textured, empty; the next 2 glumes slender, distichous, folded, keeled, thin-textured, with the keel ciliolate, each with 1 stamen or sometimes empty; the uppermost 15–26 glumes distichous, ± flat, nerveless, thin-textured, the ultimate female, the others with 1 stamen or some empty. Style 2-fid, continuous with the ovary, the slightly thickened base persistent on the nut as a short beak.
Nut strongly dorsiventrally compressed, plano-convex, with acute angles.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 1 species, Australia, Malesia, New Caledonia, Madagascar. Australia: 1 species (native).
Text by K. L. Wilson
Taxon concept: KL Wilson - Flora of NSW vol. 4 (1993)
| One species in NSW: Lepironia articulata |
|
