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Telopea 8(4): 2000 
Perennial, rushlike, dioecious herbs with sympodial growth of rhizomes and culms, 
glabrous apart from cilia often on margins of culm and rhizome sheaths, spathes and 
glumes; caespitose with short or erect rhizomes and forming small or large, dense or 
± open tussocks, or with long creeping rhizomes and forming diffuse patches of 
widely separated culms. Rhizomes covered by appressed, overlapping scales. Culms 
unbranched, terete, smooth or finely rugose, with several nodes. Leaves reduced to 
appressed sheaths, split to the base, persistent, rigid, acuminate; with a rigid, usually 
black, incurved awn representing the reduced, dorsiventral lamina. Flowers not in 
spikelets, singly or on short branching lateral axes in the axils of spathes at one or 
several, usually closely spaced, uppermost culm nodes; wind pollinated, shortly 
pedicellate, subtended by a bract; spathes persistent, rigid, acute or acuminate, mostly 
partially obscuring the flowers; perianth of 6 tepals in two whorls, glabrous or ciliate 
at the tips. Male flowers subtended by a hyaline bract as long as the tepals; 
dorsiventrally compressed; tepals hyaline, blunt or acute or acuminate, glabrous or 
ciliate at apex; outer lateral tepals keeled and the other outer and three inner tepals ± 
flat; stamens 3, opposite the inner tepals; filaments connate into a stout tapering solid 
column; anthers tetrasporangiate, free, dorsifixed, exserted, extrorse, attached below 
the midpoint to the top of the column, apically notched, 2-lobed, often twisted after 
anthesis; connective c. '/ 3 anther length; each lobe apiculate and dehiscing by a 
longitudinal slit; pistillode absent. Female flowers not dorsiventrally or laterally 
compressed, shortly pedicellate; tepals rigid, acute or acuminate, not keeled, the 
margins toward the base hyaline, inner tepals shorter than outer; staminodes absent; 
ovary superior, 3-locular, 3-angled; style branches 3, fused in the lower third or half, 
stout, densely covered (except for a narrow adaxial groove [i.e., stigma double- 
crested] and an abaxial ridge) by stigmatic papillae that are papillose; stigmas dry; 
ovules solitary in each loculus, placentation axile, pendulous from summit of loculus, 
orthotropous, bitegmic, tenuinucellate. Fruit a woody, 3-locular, 3-angled, loculicidal 
capsule, style base persistent as a beak. Seeds globose, flattened near the hilum, 
encircled in the median vertical plane by a hyaline flange; the outer layer white, 
readily detached; the surface with fine short spines or hooks arising from the corners 
of minute concavities. 
Vegetative structure and anatomy: Lyginiaceae are evergreen, rush-like plants but the 
species differ in growth habit and regenerative response. Two are caespitose but one 
has extensive rhizomes producing patches of widely spaced culms; one is an obligate 
seeder but two are resprouters (Bell & Pate 1993; Meney, Pate & Hickman 1999). 
Growth is sympodial, the rhizomes covered by dark brown, usually glossy scales. The 
sheaths surrounding the base of the culms develop a pattern of transverse cracks. The 
culms are the main photosynthetic organs of the plants and are lime-green, yellowing 
with age. The leaves are reduced to sheaths, which are persistent and conspicuously 
or minutely ciliate or glabrous; with a stout tapering awn representing the reduced 
amina, or with some development of the lamina in juvenile plants and in regrowth 
a ter file. The roots are stout and sand-binding, and may attain great length with a 
ense covering of persistent root-hairs; penetration to 4 m depth is reported by Pate 
anc Meney (1999). The cilia on sheaths, spathes, bracts and tepals are stout, tapering, 
multicellular, multiseriate, shortly papillate but unbranched. 
The culms of the Lyginiaceae resemble those of Restionaceae in their specialisation for 
tie combined functions of mechanical strength, photosynthesis, and resistance to 
mm a ^u dUe t0 desiccation ( Cutler 19 69; Gilg 1891; Cilg-Benedict 1930; Malmanche 
eac ^ e f955; Cheadle & Kosakai 1975). The stomates are oblique, sunken, 
overarched by the radially-elongated epidermal cells. Under the epidermis is the 
ayered chlorenchyma of palisade-like cells, with peg-cells in the substomatal 
regions, interspersed with areas of thick-walled non-photosynthetic cells (not 
or ermg substomatal cavities); pillar and protective cells of the types found in 
