Grass-tree Sentence Examples

The " grass-tree " (Xanthorrhoea), of the uplands and coast regions, is peculiarly Australian in its aspect.

This terminates in a long spike thickly studded with white blossoms. The grass-tree gives as distinct a character to an Australian picture as the agave and cactus do to the Mexican landscape.

A small group of Australian genera closely approach the order Juncaceae in having small crowded flowers with a scarious or membranous perianth; they include Xanthorrhoea (grass-tree or blackboy) and Kingia, arborescent plants with an erect woody stem crowned with a tuft of long stiff narrow leaves, from the centre of which rises a tall dense flower spike or a number of stalked flower-heads; this group has been included in Juncaceae, from which it is doubtfully distinguished only by the absence of the long twisted stigmas which characterize the true rushes.

The grass-tree of Australia (Xanthorrhoea) is a remarkable plant, allied to the rushes in the form of its flower, but with a tall, unbranched, soft-woody, palm-like trunk bearing a crown of long, narrow, grass-like leaves and stalked heads of small, densely-crowded flowers.