PANICE/E 103 



6. Spinifex, L. 



This is a stout, rigid, much branched, gregarious and dioecious 

 grass, flourishing in sand on the sea coast. Leaves are long, narrow 

 rigid, involute, spreading and recurved and thickly coriaceous. 

 Male spikelets are I- to 2-flowered, subsessile, distichous, jointed 

 on rigid peduncled spikes, which are collected in umbels and 

 surrounded by spathaceous leafy bracts. The spikelets have four 

 glumes. The first two glumes are empty. The third and the 

 fourth paleate and triandrous and sometimes the former is empty. 

 Female spikelets are collected in large globose heads of stellately 

 spreading very long rigid rod-like processes surrounded by shorter 

 subulate bracts. Each spikelet is solitary, and articulate at the 

 very base of a rachis, lanceolate, I-flowered. There are four 

 glumes. The first three glumes are as in the male spikelets, but 

 larger. The third is paleate, empty. The fourth glume has a 

 female flower. The lodicules are large and nerved. Styles are 

 long, free, with short, feathery stigmas. Grain free within the 

 hardened glumes. 



