Alexgeorgea Carlquist

Scientific Description

Family Restionaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Spreading herbs (cataphylls glossy); evergreen. ‘Normal’ plants to switch-plants, or plants of very peculiar form (female being almost subterranean); with the principal photosynthesizing function transferred to stems (culms). Leaves well developed, or much reduced (the blade being much reduced or absent). Perennial. Young stems cylindrical, or flattened (striate); not breaking easily at the nodes. Stem internodes solid, or hollow. Rhizomatous (rhizomes long). Leaves alternate; distichous, or spiral; leathery, or membranous; sessile; sheathing (and more or less reduced to the sheaths). Leaf sheaths with free margins (appressed, persistent). Leaves simple; with a persistent basal meristem, and basipetal development. Vegetative anatomy. Plants with silica bodies. Leaf anatomy. Leaf blade epidermis conspicuously differentiated into ‘long’ and ‘short’ cells, or without differentiation into ‘long’ and ‘short’ cells. Guard-cells not ‘grass type’, or ‘grass type’. Stem anatomy. Secondary thickening absent.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers functionally male, or functionally female. Unisexual flowers present. Plants dioecious. Female flowers with staminodes, or without staminodes. Male flowers with pistillodes, or without pistillodes. Floral nectaries absent (nectaries absent). Anemophilous.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in ‘spikelets’. Inflorescences scapiflorous, or not scapiflorous; terminal. Flowers bracteate; bracteolate, or ebracteolate; cyclic. Perigone tube absent. Perianth of ‘tepals’; members 6; 2 -whorled; isomerous; sepaloid. Fertile stamens present, or absent (when female). Androecium 3. Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another; 1 -whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 3; becoming exserted; isomerous with the perianth; oppositiperianthial (opposite the inner perianth members). Anthers dorsifixed; versatile, or non-versatile; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; introrse, or latrorse; bisporangiate, or tetrasporangiate; appendaged, or unappendaged. Pollen shed as single grains. Fertile gynoecium present, or absent (male flowers). Gynoecium 3 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Carpels isomerous with the perianth, or reduced in number relative to the perianth. Gynoecium syncarpous; synovarious, or synstylovarious; superior. Ovary unilocular; 1 locular; sessile to stipitate. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 3; partially joined (basally). Ovules in the single cavity 1; funicled, or sessile; pendulous; non-arillate; orthotropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit non-fleshy; indehiscent; a nut (the large (10–15 mm long) globular or obconical glossy fruit forming below ground); 1 seeded. Seeds copiously endospermic. Embryo weakly differentiated. Seedling. Hypocotyl internode absent. Mesocotyl absent. Seedling collar not conspicuous. Cotyledon hyperphyll elongated; assimilatory; more or less circular in t.s. Coleoptile absent. Seedling cataphylls absent. First leaf centric. Primary root ephemeral.

Additional characters Stems glabrous, or pubescent; branched (with short lateral branches or repeatedly branched); dimorphic (in A. ganopoda the sterile culms branched and tortuous, fertile culms longer, usually unbranched). Male spikelets several-flowered (solitary and terminal). Female spikelets 1-flowered (solitary, sessile on the rhizomes, so that the flowers are largely below ground, with glossy bracts, with only the style branches, stigmas and bract tips above ground level). Not caespitose. Female spikelets simple.