Description: Perennial much-branched shrubs, dioecious, glabrous; branches flexuose, terete, striate, with thorn-like branch tips; bark whitish or glaucous.
Leaves petiolate or sessile, lanceolate or linear, with a minute recurved spine or mucro at the apex, and with a band of abscission tissue at base of petiole; pit nectaries absent; ocrea short-tubular, hyaline, membranaceous, not ciliate on upper margin, soon disintegrating.
Flowers unisexual, in subsessile clusters at the nodes or in axillary or terminal interrupted spike-like inflorescences. Perianth segments 5(-6), sepaloid, enlarging and fleshy, thickened and dry when fruiting, not winged. Stamens 8 in male flowers; anthers versatile; staminodes present in female flowers, and pistillodes often present in male flowers. Style 3-fid, short; stigmas flattened, peltate, fimbriate, delicate.
Achene trigonous or ovoid, with acute apex, smooth, shining, at least partly enclosed by the persistent perianth.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 3 species, Australia (endemic), all States.
See Schuster, Wilson and Kron (2011; DOI: 10.1086/661293) on phylogeny of this genus.
Text by K.L. Wilson (Aug 2012)
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Big mounded shrub to 3 m high with interwining branches; perianth slightly thickened in fruit; leaves 2–10 mm wide; flower clusters forming axillary or terminal spike-like inflorescences 2–12 cm long, sometimes compound; occasionally solitary clusters at nodes on stems; stems regularly and usually strongly striate, not fissured or corky; anthers 0.4–1.0 mm long | Duma florulenta |
| Depauperate erect shrub to 50 cm high; perianth strongly thickened and angular in fruit; mature leaves no more than 2 mm wide; flower clusters at distinctly separated nodes on stems; older stems very rough, corky, fissured or wrinkled or smooth or faintly and irregularly striate; anthers 0.8–1.3 mm long | Duma horrida |
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