Taraxis B.G.Briggs & L.A.S.Johnson

Scientific Description

Family Restionaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs; evergreen. Switch-plants; 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 to flattened (stout near base, upper branches slender, erect or flexuose, forming tangled masses, striate); not breaking easily at the nodes. Stem internodes hollow (the central cavity lobed). Rhizomatous (rhizome stout, glabrous except for tufts of hairs in the cataphyll axils). 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’, or not in ‘spikelets’ (depending on interpretation of the single flower). Inflorescences scapiflorous, or not scapiflorous; terminal, or axillary. Flowers bracteate; bracteolate, or ebracteolate; cyclic. Perigone tube absent. Perianth of ‘tepals’, or vestigial; members 2–3, or 5–6; 2 -whorled, or 1 -whorled; isomerous, or anisomerous; 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; 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 2–3 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Carpels isomerous with the perianth, or reduced in number relative to the perianth. Gynoecium syncarpous; synstylovarious; superior. Ovary unilocular; 1 locular; sessile to stipitate. Gynoecium stylate. Styles (2–)3; partially joined. Ovules in the single cavity 1; funicled, or sessile; pendulous; non-arillate; orthotropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit non-fleshy. 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 Perianth of male flowers of ‘tepals’; 5(–6) (2 outer tepals keeled, inner tepals flat). Perianth of female flowers vestigial (tepals reduced to very small membranous scales); 2, or 3. Stems glabrous, or pubescent (only in sheath axils); much branched; not dimorphic. Male spikelets several-flowered to many-flowered (4–13-flowered, the spikelets in small clusters at several upper nodes, glumes mostly fertile). Female spikelets 1-flowered (the spikelets solitary at several upper nodes, most plants also bearing numerous large galls that resemble spikelets, with c. 80 sterile ‘glumes’). Not caespitose. Female spikelets simple.