Description: Perennial shrubs or undershrubs, densely hairy with a cotton-woolly branched indumentum, stem erect, branched.
Leaves decussate or whorled, margins entire or crenate, flat or with margins recurved to revolute; sessile or petiolate.
Inflorescences terminal, cymose; cymes pedunculate or sessile, pyramidal or spike-like panicles, or the cymes sessile, congested to form decussate or whorled clusters. Flowers 5-merous, sessile or pedicellate. Calyx tubular, mostly lobed, pubescent outside, villous inside the tube, lobes entire or crenate at the apex. Corolla mostly 5-lobed, hairy inside; lobes entire or crenate towards apex, mostly equal. Stamens mostly 5, inserted in the corolla tube, exserted or scarcely exserted. Ovary 4-locular, with 1 ovule in each loculus; ovules attached at or above the middle of the loculus; style deeply 2-branched, exserted or scarcely so.
Fruit dry, globose, indehiscent, 1- or 2-seeded.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 26 species, endemic Australia. Australia: all mainland States except Vic.
Text by B. J. Conn
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Bracts larger than cymes; lowest corolla lobe much larger than other lobes; flowers arranged in distant, whorled, sessile clusters of 3, each cluster 3-flowered | Dicrastylis verticillata |
| Bracts much smaller than cymes; corolla lobes more or less equal; flowers arranged in terminal subglobose clusters or in distant pedunculate or sessile clusters, 1–3 clusters per whorl and each 5–7-flowered | Dicrastylis lewellinii |
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