92 Forage Plants of Australia. 



OEDEE MAESILEACEJE. 



MARSILEA DETJMMONDII, A. BE. 



"Kardoo." 

 Flora Austr., Vol. VII, p. 684. 



A DWAEF plant with a creeping rhizome, and rooting at the nodes. The 

 barren fronds are arranged on long stipes, bearing four digitate fan-shaped 

 leaflets, with numerous conspicuous veins radiating from their base. The 

 end of the rhizome, the under side of the leaflets, and the involucres are more 

 or less covered with silky hair. This plant is peculiar to the interiors of all 

 the Australian Colonies, and is found growing on the margins of swamps, or 

 where water is collected in shallow pools after rain. It produces no true 

 seeds ; but the fertile frond, (figure 1), which is usually termed an involucre, 

 bears spore cases of two kinds, termed by scientists macrospores and micro- 

 spores, which are generally admitted to be sexual. After rain the spores in 

 these spore cases vegetate, and, rising to the surface of the water, cover it 

 with a green coat resembling a scum. As the water subsides these small 

 plants take root in the soft mud, and after a time cover the ground with a 

 dense coating of vegetation. After this, if the weather should continue dry 

 for some time, the plant withers, leaving the ground covered with great 

 quantities of involucres, the spores of which will vegetate after the next 

 rainfall. These changes go on according to the state of the weather. If the 

 water, however, should be permanent where these plants are growing, they 

 will continue to live for an indefinite period, but will not produce fertile 

 fronds (involucres). "When the plant is grown on permanent water, it will 

 cover it after a time. In this state it should check evaporation, and 

 prove valuable to persons having dams in the interior. Every pastoralist 

 and farmer having a dam that is exposed to the fierce heat of the sun, 

 might sow some of the nardoo spores on it to test the value or otherwise of 

 this plant as a preventive against evaporation. Stock of all descriptions are 

 extremely fond of this plant, which forms a most nutritious forage when 

 grown on damp soils. In former years the aboriginals used to collect the 

 spore cases (involucres), and grind them between two stones ; and the result- 

 was a kind of meal or flour, which they made into a paste or kind of porridge, 

 and largely used as an article of food. The unfortunate explorers, Burke 

 and "Wills, were at one period reduced to a diet of this nardoo. It seems to 

 be most difficult for a European to digest if we may judge from the 

 following extract from Wills's Journal : " I cannot understand this nardoo 

 at all. It certainly will not agree with me in any form. "We are now reduced 

 to it alone; and we manage to get from 4 Ib. to 5 Ib. a day between us. . . . 

 It seems to give no nutriment. . . . Starvation on nardoo is by no means 

 very unpleasant, but for the weakness one feels, and the utter inability to 

 move oneself; for, as far as appetite is concerned, it gives me the greatest 

 satisfaction." 



