Lomandra longifolia (Cultivated)


 

Lomandra longifolia, commonly known as Spiny-head Mat-rush,[2] Spiky-headed Mat-rush[3] or Basket Grass, is a perennial, rhizomatous herb found throughout eastern Australia. The leaves are 40 cm to 80 cm long, and generally have a leaf of about 8 mm to 12 mm wide.[4] It grows in a variety of soil types and is frost, heat and drought tolerant.[5] Labillardiere described Lomandra longifolia from a specimen collected in Tasmania.[6]

This strappy leaf plant is often used on roadside plantings in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and the USA, due to its high level of drought tolerance. The breeding of more compact finer leaf forms has made Lomandra longifolia popular as an ever green grass like plant in home plantings. Tanika, Lomandra longifolia ‘LM300’, also known as Breeze Grass in the USA, was the first fine leaf type. It still has the finest leaf of any Lomandra longifolia, with a width of 3 mm.[7] In temperatures down to −7 degrees Celsius these plants stay evergreen, and this variety has been recorded to live in the USA at a number of sites including Alabama, at −10 degrees Celsius.
Indigenous Australians ground the seeds for use in damper, and the long, flat, fibrous leaves were used for weaving. The base of the leaves contains water, and was chewed by those in danger of dehydration.[3]
(From Wikipedia on 23.1.15)

 

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For id from LBG, Darjeeling- NS DEC 11 : 15 posts by 4 authors. Attachments (4).

This clump forming plant was recorded from Llyods Botanical Garden, Darjeeling.. a palm? a sedge ? I am clueless..
Please advise..

Some Asparagaceae? Wild guess.

This seems to be a member of Lomandraceae, something similar to https://www.flickr.com/photos/tony_rodd/2964211736/.

I reiterate this is probably Lomandra but can’t say species, please check following links for further reading.viewing –

Sir the most commonly cultivated Lomandra is L. longifolia Labill., and it can withstand climatic parameters of Darjeeling. The species may be confused with related taxa –
Online sell of some cultivars –
I think your species is L. l. L.

Yes …, this is most likely Lomandra longifolia Labill. ..
Thank you very much for digging deeply and reaching to conclusion..

Luck played a role too! Else it was puzzling. I wonder at the imagination of the person who selected it for the garden.

Botanical gardens are a collection
a museum
where good bad ugly
all find a place
(best run botanical gardens with a vision also serve as a germ plasm repository… in form of seed banks, herbaria, live collections, cell cultures in perpetuity and frozen samples in liquid n2 etc etc )
all of its for study (By scientists) and wonderment (by the rest of us)
a sedge must also find a place in botanical gardens
all that’s “displayed” in a botanical garden does not have to be eye-pleasing.
Sedges must have had a role in botanical life of this earth
and in sheltering animals bacteria or other life forms and helping humans
we just may not have found that purpose yet…
I dont know much about sedges other than a few in california that grass free lawn movement had popularized… and form a part of the aquatic filtering system along with rushes at edges of human habitat… its called riparian zones

Best known sedge is the papyrus. that the whole world knows….
I would like to know from our economic botany professors : what are sedges used for in INDIA.
May be … can send this question to relevant folks including biodiversity, ecology and economic botany professors?
would be educational, immensely

 
 
 

References:

The Plant List Ver.1.1
 WCSP  Wikipedia