Lepidobolus basiflorus Pate & Meney

Dioecious, caespitose perennial herb, with short ascending rhizomes to 7 cm long with a long, dense, white, woolly pubescence of hairs 1–2 cm long; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Scales dark red-brown, glabrous except a few hairs on abaxial surface near apex. Culms erect, terete, dimorphic, sterile and fertile culms dissimilar: sterile culms flexuose to tortuose, c. 30 cm long, 0.9–1.1 mm diam., minutely tuberculate, pale-to yellow-green, basally densely villous, apically glabrous, the internodes numerous, 3–5.5 cm long; fertile culms much shorter than the sterile culms, 1–4 cm long, with 1–4 spikelets. Sheaths oblong, caducous, 9–11.5 mm long, pale brown, smooth, glabrous; apex obtuse; lamina subulate, 1.1–1.3 mm long. Spathes caducous, c. 9 mm long. Male spikelets cylindrical, 1.2–2.3 cm long, c. 0.5 cm wide; c. 75–150 glumes, the lowest third of glumes with abortive flowers (sterile), the mid-third glumes fertile and persistent, the uppermost third glumes fertile and caducous; glumes brown to golden-brown, oblong, 2.2–3.0 mm long, apically obtuse, margin with white hairs; awn dark brown, 1.6–2.1 mm long. Female spikelets ovoid, c. 9.5 mm long, c. 3 mm wide; glumes c. 18, lowest few sterile, upper glumes fertile, ovate, 4.5–5.0 mm long, brown; apex obtuse and often fringed with white hairs; awn stout, reflexed or recurved, dark brown, 2–4 mm long. Male flowers: tepals glabrous, the lowest 2 fertile flowers with 6 tepals, all others with 5 tepals; outer tepals cuspidate, 2.6–2.9 mm long; inner tepals 2.2–2.6 mm long; anthers 1.7–2.3 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 4 or 5, 2–6 mm long; outer tepals rigid, keeled, acute; inner tepals shorter, narrow-lanceolate, hyaline. Nut globose, with the style base forming a short apical cap. Culm anatomy: central cavity present; chlorenchyma continuous, mostly of a single layer of elongated peg cells; mostly with inward-projecting epidermal cells partially lining substomatal cavities; walls of epidermal cells thickened on outer wall and outer part of radial walls; radial walls often sinuous; often with radially elongated epidermal cells forming mounds on the culm surface; with stalked, branched multicellular hairs.

Grows in yellow sand, in shrubland or dry heath on sand or sandy loam of sandplain with scattered mallee eucalypts; sometimes on rises in the sandplain.