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Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 
Female flowers 2 per spikelet; tepals 3, oblong 2.5 mm long; style purple, fused; stylar 
branches up to 5 mm long; ovary bilocular. Fruit a heart-shaped indehiscent capsule, 
3^ mm long, 1.5-2 mm broad, compressed with a prominent persistent woody stylar 
beak; capsule splitting loculicidally along the broad axis of the fruit; seeds 2 per fruit, 
oblong to reniform, 2.2 mm long, 1 mm broad, light brown, uniformly tuberculate. 
Flowering: August-September. Seed-shed: September. Seedlhigs: first season's culms 
sinuose with sterile flattened branches, second-year culms resembling those of adult. 
Rhizomes creeping, woolly as in adult. 
Affinities: Loxocaryn albipes shows closest affinity to Loxocarya striata (F. Muell.) 
L.A.S. Johnson & B.G. Briggs ined. (= Restio megalotlieca nom. illeg.) in habit, fruit 
characters and rhizome features. This species is typical of the genus Loxocarya, 
particularly in fruit characteristics and the chemical feature of possessing the unusual 
non-protein amino acid S-methyl-cysteine (Pate et al 1995). 
Ecological features: Loxocarya albipes is known only from a lateritic gravel pit surrounded 
by mostly agricultural land near Wongan Hills, W.A. Absence of rhizome starch and the 
superficial location of rhizomes indicate that plants are probably killed by fire. 
Conservation status: Probably a disturbance opportunist; further research is urgently 
required on distribution and mode of recruitment in natural habitats. Only 30 adult 
plants and several seedlings are currently known, suggesting that the species deserves 
high-priority status for conservation. 
Etymology: The specific epithet is from the Latin albus, white and pes, a foot referring 
to the densely tomentose, superficially creeping rhizomes. 
Loxocarya magna K. A. Meney & K. W. Dixon, sp. nov. 
Planta dioica, caespite rotundato, magno, rhizomatibus reptantibus, culmis 
cylindraceis ramis sinuosis compressis spiculas plurimas sessiles vel breviter 
pedunculatas et plerumque singulas ferentibus. 
Type: South-western Western Australia, South-west Botanical Province, Scott River 
along Governor Broome Road (115°17'E, 34°15'S), Meney & Dixon KM 109, 8 December 
88, (holotype KPBG; isotype PERTH). Growing in shallow sandy soils over lateritic 
ironstone, often covered by a perched water-table during winter and spring. 
Habit: Plants dioecious, forming tall, tightly coiled compact clumps to 1.5 m tall. 
Rhizomes creeping, covered with short white-grey hairs, 4-5 mm wide; scale leaves 
dull grey, scarious, broadly triangular, 2-2.5 mm long, closely appressed; cataphylls 
grey-brown, ribbed, closely appressed, 1—1.5 mm long with a broad apex and short 
(0.5 mm), broad lamina. Culms terete, hollow, striate, many-branched, pale-green, 
70-100 cm long, 2-3 mm wide at base, branchlets sinuose, flattened; culm nodes 
more or less equidistant, 5-8 cm apart, approximately 10-15 per culm; sheaths 
broadly lanceolate appressed, light brown to straw, striate, ovate, 10-12 mm long; 
lamina 1-3 mm long. Male spikelets mostly formed on second or third order 
branchlets, 3-10 per branchlet, sessile or pedicellate, 2-3 mm long, ovoid, numerous; 
glumes obovate, 1.5-1.7 mm long, straw-brown coloured; mucro up to 1 mm, 
dark-brown, stout. Male floxvers sessile, up to 6 per spikelet; tepals 6, straw-brown, 
linear 1.5-2 mm long; mucro triangular; stamens 3, exserted. Female spikelets fewer 
than on males, axillary or terminal, 2-3 per branchlet, elongate, 8-11 mm long; 
glumes rigid, woody, divergent in fruit, 7-11 mm long. Female flowers one per 
spikelet, sessile, exceeded by glumes; tepals 3, lanceolate, 1.5-2 mm long; style 
unbranched, plumose. Fruit a unilocular, dolabriform, indehiscent capsule, 
8-11 mm long, 4-5 mm wide with prominent woody stylar beak, dehiscing down 
one side; seed flat grey-brown, 4 mm long. 
