Description: Rhizomatous perennials. Culms noded, leafy.
Basal leaves reduced to sheaths; cauline leaves flat; ligule absent.
Inflorescence compound, umbel-like with elongated slender branches bearing solitary, small, spikelet-like units each composed of numerous, spirally imbricate pseudospikelets; the lower 2 or 3 involucral bracts leaf-like. In the pseudospikelets, glumes of three types: lowest glume broad, slightly curved, nerveless, thick-textured, empty; the next two glumes distichous, folded, keeled, thin-textured, with the keel ciliolate, each with 1 stamen or sometimes empty; the uppermost 2 glumes distichous, ± flat, nerveless, thin-textured, the penultimate with a stamen or empty, the ultimate female (or empty if lower down the spikelet-like unit). Style 2-fid, broadened towards base.
Nut broadly biconvex, with 2 pale ribs, crowned by persistent style base.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 1 species, Australia & New Guinea. Australia: 1 sp (native).
Text by K. L. Wilson (1993)
Taxon concept: Flora of NSW vol. 4 (1993)
| One species in NSW: Exocarya sclerioides |
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