Description: Dioecious or monoecious perennial herbs, tufted or rhizome creeping. Culms green, erect or rarely scrambling, terete or slightly compressed, simple or branched, with persistent sheathing scales, crowded and imbricate at base but distant or absent on the aerial portion.
Leaves with lamina reduced to a small linear or terete lamina or absent.
Inflorescence either terminal and ± loosely paniculate or spike-like, or the partial inflorescences axillary and clustered. Male and female inflorescences when separate not very different. Flowers not in definite spikelets. Glumes not or scarcely imbricate; bracteoles 1 or 2 beneath each flower. Tepals 6, glume-like and rigid or thin and almost hyaline, acute, usually longer than the glumes. Male stamens 3; filaments free; anthers 1-locular. Female staminodes usually 3; ovary 3-angular, 3-locular, with one ovule in each loculus; styles 3, filiform.
Fruit a capsule, 3-locular, opening at the angles. Seed globose or ellipsoidal.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 26 species, endemic Australia. Australia: all States.
Three species have been moved from this genus to Sporadanthus (q.v.) since Flora of NSW vol. 4 was published in hard-copy.
Text by A. L. Quirico & B. G. Briggs; edited KL Wilson (Oct 2012); BG Briggs & KL Wilson (July 2023)
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Sheaths confined to the base of the culm or 1 on the aerial part of the culm | Lepyrodia anarthria |
| Cauline sheaths present, 2 or more on each culm | 2 |
| 2 | Some or all of the sheaths on the culm closely appressed, except where subtending a branch | 3 |
| Cauline sheaths all loose and often recurved
Back to 1 | 4 |
| 3 | Culms 0.5–0.9 mm diam., 15–50 cm high, branched or unbranched, the surface mostly minutely wrinkled or pitted; flowers borne singly or few together mostly spaced 1–10 mm apart along the inflorescence branches | Lepyrodia leptocaulis |
| Culms 0.5–2 mm diam., 40–75 cm high, usually unbranched below the inflorescence, smooth; flowers crowded on the inflorescence branches
Back to 2 | Lepyrodia muelleri |
| 4 | Culms arising along rhizome at intervals of >1 cm; culms with 7–10 sheaths; sheaths loose but not or slightly recurved; male tepals 2.3–3(–3.2) mm long. Southeast Queensland and NSW North Coast | Lepyrodia imitans |
| Culms arising along rhizome at intervals of 1 cm or less; culms with 2–6(–7) sheaths; sheaths mostly distinctly recurved; male tepals > 2.9 mm long
Back to 2 | 5 |
| 5 | Culm sheaths 2 or 3; culms slightly or markedly flattened, elliptical in cross-section | 6 |
| Cauline sheaths 4 or more; culms terete
Back to 4 | 7 |
| 6 | Culm surface tuberculate when dried; lowest culm internode long, lowest sheath (2–)5–14 cm above the cataphylls; culm sheaths 1.5–4.5 cm long. Central and South Coast of NSW, eastern edge of the Southern Tablelands | Lepyrodia verruculosa |
| Culm surface smooth to slightly rugose when dried; lowest culm internode short, lowest sheath mostly 1–3 cm above the cataphylls; culm sheaths 2.5–6 cm long. Northern Tablelands of NSW
Back to 5 | Lepyrodia oligocolea |
| 7 | Seeds colliculate with many small raised areas that are prominently ridged; spathe (primary subtending inflorescence bract) to 2.0 cm long; male tepals 2.9–3.8 mm long. Central Tablelands and northeast edge of Southern Tablelands of NSW | Lepyrodia cryptica |
| Seeds with fewer large elliptical raised areas that are finely striate; spathe to 3.0 cm long; male tepals 3.2–4.3 mm long. Southeast Queensland (Moreton and Wide Bay districts) and NSW Coast, south to Green Cape
Back to 5 | Lepyrodia scariosa |
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