Caustis pentandra
R.Br. Thick Twig-rushPerennial with short, stout rhizome. Culms smooth, 45–60 cm high or more, 3–8 mm diam. Leaf sheaths very dark red-brown to blackish. Inflorescence with 5–12 distant clusters of branches, 20–120 cm long, ultimate branches straight or somewhat spreading. Spikelets 1–2-flowered, 10–15 mm long; glumes 4–6, acute, long-mucronate (lower glumes) to short-mucronate (upper glumes), red-brown to dark grey-brown, puberulous, margins hyaline and ± ciliate, 9–13 mm long; stamens 5; anthers 5.0–6.0 mm long, excluding apical appendage 0.5–1.1 mm long; style 4–5-fid; persistent style-base 2.5–3.5 mm long, straw-coloured. Nut narrow-ellipsoid to narrow-ovoid, minutely dotted, whitish to pale yellow-brown, 4.5–8 mm long, 2.0–2.3 mm diam. Flowers spring–summer.
LoM, Wim, GleP, VVP, GipP, OtP, CVU, GGr, DunT, EGL, EGU, WPro, HSF, Strz. All states except NT. In heaths and open woodlands, usually on sandy soils and generally occurring in damper situations than C. flexuosa, rarely co-extensive (as in the Grampians).
Characteristically, the leaf-sheaths are wrinkled.
Wilson, K.L. (1994). Cyperaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 2, Ferns and Allied Plants, Conifers and Monocotyledons, pp. 238–356. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning
