Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/831

Lepidosperma.]

Tufted perennial herbs, usually of large size. Stems tall and stout, leafy throughout their length. Leaves usually long, very coarse and harsh, narrowed into long subulate or filiform points; margms involute, scabrid. Panicle large, terminal; sometimes broad and effuse, with drooping branches; sometimes narrower and more erect. Spikelets clustered, black or dark-brown, 1–2-flovered; the upper flower hermaphrodite and fruit-bearing; the lower flower sterile or male. Glumes many, imbricated all round; the outer 2–5 or more empty, keeled, often mucronate; flowering glumes minute at first, but enlarging in fruit. Hypogynous bristles wanting. Stamens usually 4 in the hermaphrodite flower, often 4–6 in the male flower; filaments greatly elongated after flowering, and often holding the nut. Nut hard and bony, ellipsoid or ovoid or obovoid, obscurely trigonous or terete, red or reddish-brown or black.