8. Spinifex, Linn.

Usually wide-creeping hard and stout branching grasses. Leaves long, involute, silky. Inflorescence diœcious. Male spikelets 2-flowered, sessile or shortly pedicelled, articulate on long erect spikes which are arranged in umbels surrounded by leafy spathaceous bracts. Glumes 4, all membranous, awnless; 2 lowest empty; 3rd and 4th each with a palea and 3 stamens. Female spikelets 1- or rarely 2-flowered, numerous, each one solitary at the base of long rigid pungent stellately spreading spines, surrounded by short lanceolate bracts, the whole inflorescence forming a large globose head. Glumes 4, subequal, narrow; 2 lowest empty; 3rd with a palea and sometimes with a rudimentary male flower; 4th with a female flower. Lodicules 2, large. Styles long, free; stigmas plumose. Grain free within the hardened flowering glume and palea.

A small genus of 4 species, 3 of which are found in Australia, one of them extending to New Zealand and New Caledonia, the fourth stretching from Ceylon and India to Java, China, and Japan.