Common Name: Hair Sedges
Description: Tufted stoloniferous perennials, usually less than 1 m high, rhizome tightly clumping to spreading, new culms within a ramet arising slightly higher than the parent culm resulting in a compact candelabrum arrangement. New ramets forming from spreading rhizomes. Culms scapose. Culms and leaves erect to spreading, terete or quadrangular, capilliform and decumbent to rigid and erect.
Leaves basal; blade usually strongly reduced on the sheath (rarely to 3 cm long), ligule present, cleft.
Inflorescence an open or contracted paniculate, usually pseudolateral, with few spikelets. Primary bracts usually short, occasionally long, sheathing, often sub-erect. Spikelets with several spirally arranged, long persistent glumes of increasing length, upper 1 or 2 glumes each subtending a flower, enclosed by the wings of the next glume. Lower flower functionally male, upper flower(s) bisexual. Bristles absent or filiform. Hypogynous scales present, united and thickened only at the base, forming a small ring or cup fused to the base of the nutlet, sometimes producing 3 flat scales or up to 5 filiform, barbellulate bristles; Stamens 3. Style (2-)3-fid, hairy; style base distinct, much thickened, persistent, papillose to tuberculate.
Nutlet ovate, rounded 3-angular, surface usually smooth below, usually scabrous on persistent, spindle-shaped style base.
Distribution and occurrence: A genus of 11 species in southern and eastern Australia, and in New Zealand. Two species in NSW, 1 informal.
Previously included under Tetraria, a genus now excluded from Australia and placed in a separate subtribe. More closely related to Machaerina and Lepidosperma.
Text by R.L. Barrett, J.J. Bruhl & K.L. Wilson, Aug. 2021
Taxon concept: Barrett et al., Telopea 24: 55 (2021)
Taxa not yet included in identification key
Netrostylis sp. East Coast (D.E. Albrecht 597)
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Culms subterete or compressed with a single groove, 0.2–0.4 mm diam.; leaf sheath 3–4.5 cm long; inflorescence 5–11 mm long; nutlet 1.6–1.7 mm long; style base shorter than the nutlet | Netrostylis capillaris |
| Culms distinctly finely ridged or angular (some culms may be subterete), 0.7–1.1 mm diam.; leaf sheath 4–10 cm long; inflorescence 12–45 mm long; nutlet 2.6–2.7 mm long; style base longer than the nutlet | Netrostylis sp. East Coast (D.E.Albrecht 597) |
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