Description :

• Plants caespitose or tangled
• Rhizomes rarely present
• Culms terete, compressed or 4-sided, generally branching
• Leaf sheaths persistent, convolute, ± mucronate or aristate, rarely prolonged into a foliaceous mucro
• Male inflorescence similar to female, or very different, often with smaller spikelets, usually with more bracts fertile
• Male spikelets usually many, in paniculate or spicate cymes, occasionally solitary and terminal, usually with many florets, each with a spathe or sheath at its base; bracts usually many and imbricate, few to many fertile; perianth of 4 or 6 segments in 2 series, usually compressed, sometimes 3-sided; segments generally unequal, rigid or membranous; outer lateral ones conduplicate, boat-shaped, often villous and keeled; anterior segments flattened or rounded; inner usually smaller, thinner and flattened; stamens exserted from florets at anthesis, anthers oblong, apiculate or muticous; ovary rudimentary or 0
• Female inflorescence similar to male, or very different, often with larger spikelets; spikelets 1-many, variously arranged; spathes generally smaller than spikelets, sometimes much larger
• Female spikelets : bracts various, usually several, occasionally 1 fertile, usually with some sterile bracts at base; perianth segments osseous, outer lateral ones keeled, keels often woolly; staminodes well developed; ovary 1-3-locular, styles 3, plumose, exserted from bracts at anthesis
• Fruit capsular, compressed, 3-sided, (1)2- or 3-seeded; seeds rough with various raised patterns or smooth
• x = 7, 11, 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Restio Rottb.
  • Rottbøll: 9 (1772) name conserved
  • Masters: 61 (1897)
  • Pillans: 210 (1928) in part
  • Linder: 437 (1985)
  • Linder: 251 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 150, southern Africa, tropical Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species ± 89, mainly Western Cape, also extending to Northern Cape (Namaqualand), Eastern Cape and reaching KwaZulu-Natal