Spike Rush

Lomandra species.

One of Australia's deceptively delicious grasses, these often unassuming, tall, dense clumps are a potential staple grain and a starchy snack food for the intrepid adventurer-survivalist.

Names

The most common name for these dense plants is their scientific one: Lomandra. Older writings originally named this genus as Xerotes but is no longer in use today. It is a species of rush, and is also commonly called (spiny-headed) mat rush, basket rush and, in some places, sag (due to the drooping leaves). It shares some features in common with other edible rushes such as club, spike and bullrushes, namely, the edible leaf bases, flowers/pollen and seeds. Varieties generally change in their overall profile, foliage length and width, and a lesser extent their flower spikes. Lomandra longifolia (pictured above and not to be confused with the earlier blueberry lily, Dianella longifolia!) is extremely common and popular garden ornamental, standing in dense clumps up to 1.5 to 2m tall with tough, drooping, strap-like leaves. L. confertifolia (figure 1 below) has thinner leaves and an overall smaller, compact profile in comparison, which makes it ideal as a pathing ornamental. L. hystrix (figure 2 below) has a lighter green foliage and delicate flower heads. L. multiflora (figure 3 below) generally has few leaves but glorious, bunched flower spikes, as does L. spicata (not pictured but see seed head in figure 8 below).

Figure 1. L. confertifolia. Notice the thinner leaves. This species is the smallest lomandra, often being less than 0.75 metres in height. It is a common landscaping ornamental plant. Wikicommons.

Figure 2. L. hystrix, which has thinner flower spikes and a lighter green. Average height 0.75 to 1.5 metres. Wikicommons.

Figure 3. L. multifolia with its impressive flower spikes. Average height 0.75 to 1.25 metres. Wikicommons.

Habitat and Range

Native to the mountains and forests of Australia's coast, lomandra can be found from the verge of the sea to tropical rainforest climes of Cape York, to the temperate eucalyptus forests the length of the Great Dividing Range, as far south as Tasmania and as far west as Perth. It will grow happily on escarpments and granite outcrops, behind dunes, along creeks and underneath trees of all kinds. Because lomandra has been cultivated as an ornamental rush for some time, it is extremely common in suburbia around Australia and internationally. It will be found easily and growing prolifically in public parks, private gardens and mountainous acreage. Lomandra is less common the further west one travels, as it does not like the open plains or dry, desert climes of the interior. Lomandra is extremely drought-hardy, requiring minimal watering or attention after being established in a garden.

Figure 4. Distribution of Lomandra (all species) across the continent. Atlas of Living Australia.

Identification

Key Identifying Features

• Long, strappy leaves, 50-200cm, often with ragged, dried-up tips

• Leaves have no veins evident

• Leaves emerge from a starchy, white, stemless, edible core in the leaf base

• Flower spikes have prominent spines, 1-5 cm in length

• Flower spikes dried out from past seasons may remain on the plant

• Male flowers emerge in spring (August-November) and are tiny, 2-3mm, yellow, three-petaled and emit a sweet, strong fragrance

• Female flowers emerge in spring (August-September) and are puffy, 2-3mm and very short lasting

• Female flowers turn into green, peppercorn-like seeds (September-December)

• Seed pods turn orange (rarely, purple or black) when ripe (December-February), and become stone hard

• Seed pods have two or three segments containing a total of two or three white-grey grain kernels with a single black-grey dot (germ)

While it is technically possible to confuse lomandra with the earlier blueberry lily (Dianella spp.) if neither are in flower (or other poisonous lookalikes, see caution below), the towering clumps and ragged tips of the long, tough leaves of lomandra ought to be enough to ensure this does not happen. Lomandra will usually have a higher profile than lookalikes if they are both growing in the same area. If one plucks blueberry lily (Dianella spp.) out of the ground, one will be met with a meagre splay of roots connected to a thin stem; attempting the same with lomandra, however, will meet the intrepid survivalist with a wad of tough leaves that all connect to a central, white base which will regularly snap away from the dense root ball (see video below).

Lomandra flower spikes and seeds are impossible to confuse with lookalikes, however. Flowers appear in late August through November and they are dioecious, having distinct male and female parts. The male flowers are tiny, white-yellow and cluster in the hundreds around a noticeably spiky stem, emitting a saturating, sweet fragrance that will fill the air for hundreds of metres around (figure 5 below). Male plants will never bear seeds. Female flowers are slightly more sparse, being tiny, fluffy pom-poms on the spikes when compared to their male counterparts (figure 6 below). After wind pollination they will turn into round, green seeds that resemble green peppercorn, turning yellow-orange-red and toughening rock-hard when fully ripe (figure 7 below). Each seed will contain two or three small, edible, white-grey kernels (see figure 10 below). Male and female plants will produce 6-20 flower spikes each per season, depending on the age and situation of the plant. It is quite common to see the dry, spent flower spikes remaining on the plant well after flowering or seeding (see header image at the top of this article), which, besides their larger size and strappy foliage, is probably the easiest way to distinguish lomandra from other lookalikes in the field.

Figure 5. Male flowers of L. longifolia. Male flowers emit a strong, sweet fragrance and emerge on plants from late August to November. Melrose Park, Ermington, NSW. © JPM, 2021.

Figure 6. Female flowers on L. hystrix. Female flowers are small puffs with no fragrance and last only a couple of weeks in late August to early September. Chiswick, © JPM, 2022.

Figure 7. Unripe, green seeds of L. longifolia. Note the spikes! They are as sharp as they look! Melrose Park, Ermington, NSW. © JPM, 2021.

Figure 8. Orange, ripe seeds of L. spicata. Wikicommons.

Figure 9. An example of a rarer black-seeded mat rush (probably L. longifolia or L. filiformis). Hornsby Blue Gum Track, Sydney. © JPM, 2022.

Figure 10. Husked, threshed, sifted and roasted lomandra kernels. © JPM, 2021.

Culinary Uses

Lomandra has three primary uses. The first and least laborious is as a quick bushfood snack. Reach down into the centre of the plant and grab a wad of leaves near the base of the plant. Brace yourself carefully (I do not advise picking these near cliff edges!) and heave-ho, and you shall be met with a clump of leaves  in your hand that culminate in a white, fleshy base (see video below). Give the base a wash and chew the white portion, which is basically the lowest 1 to 4 cm of the base of the leaf clump. These taste like sweet peas and have a crunchy texture. You can slice it thinly and add it to stir fries and salads, but they will have a tendency to be quite fibrous and stringy. In the field you can spit out fibrous parts and use the rest of the green leaves as detailed below for weaving, or discard. Flowers are also edible and have a similar sweet pea taste to them, although due to their small size it is hardly worth the bother.

Video: Harvesting mat rush leaf bases courteousy of Gordon Dedman and Bushcraft Survival Australia

Secondly, the white-grey kernels inside the seeds are edible. Oddly, Tim Low does not mention this usage for the plant but I have tried the kernels and they are very tasty. Each seed contains two or three germ kernel segements of carbohydrate- and nutrient-rich goodness; the outer husk is tough and must be discarded. If you want to try these in the field, they can be picked while they are still green (unripe) and somewhat pliable (early-mid December). Pluck a green seed from the seed head; remember to take care with the sharp spikes on the stem! Place the seed in your palm and prise/crush it open with a fingernail. You can then delicately extract the white-grey kernels and chew on it. Alternatively, the whole green seed heads can be harvested from the plant. Cut the stem near the base of the plant where it lacks spikes, and leave whole spikes to air or sun dry until the pods crack open and release the kernels (preferably into a bucket). These can then be ground into flour. Alternatively you can crush the pods in a mortar and pestle without damaging the kernels at all, although this process is very labour intensive.

Video: Harvesting green mat rush seeds and kernels courteousy of Australian Survival School

The seeds turn ripe and yellow in late December to early January, becoming stone hard at that point. Ripe seed can be harvested as above: cut the whole seed spike from the plant and leave, preferably in a bucket, to air or sun dry until the pods open and the kernels can be shaken out. These kernels can then be milled into flour, preferrably with a hammer mill if you have one, and cooked by adding them to any baked good, such as breads, biscuits or muesli. Raw kernels are exceedingly hard and must be milled by machine or hard stone mortar & pestle. I have not yet attempted to make bread from lomandra kernels, although it should be absolutely delicious because they are themselves fantastic eating.  When baked as flour in bread they will have a texture similar to corn meal with a nuttier flavour - see here [LINK]. Lomandra flour is gluten free so it is not suitable for loaves except when mxed with glutinous flours such as wheat or rye; pan fried lomandra bread, e.g. tortillas, apparently has more success than oven-baked.

Traditionally, indigenous women harvested, crushed and ground the seeds with a millstone in a long and laborious process. The resulting flour was baked into a damper or mixed with flours from other native seeds and grains, such as kangaroo grass and acacia seed.

Like the flax lily, the long, tough leaves of lomandra are excellent for weaving, especially large items like mats, covers, baskets, bags and even rope.

Overall, lomandra is an extremely common, easily accessible and useful wild food plant which ought to adorn Australian dinner plates year-round. I think it deserves a return to its former glory as a staple indigenous Australian food. Given its drought tolerance, I'm surprised no-one has attempted to commercialise this no water-, no fertiliser-, no care-required staple grain.

Caution! Look-alikes! 

It has come to my attention that it is possible, however unlikely, for inexperienced wild food foragers to potentially confuse Lomandra for an unrelated, introduced and potentially toxic ornamental strappy lillies like Dietes and Liriope. Fortunately, despite the similarity of their strappy leaves, both Dietes and Liriope have distinctive flowers and fruits that make mis-identification easy to rectify.

Dietes flowers are six-petaled, white-yellow-blue or yellow-orange with prominent dots, which usually occur on a branching stem emerging from the plant. These flowers will turn into brown pods that split open into three segments when ripe. However, Dietes have very similar foliage, albeit usually only reaching 1 metre in height, whereas many lomandras will reach 1.5 to 2 metres. Lomandra foliage will always have ragged tips and no conspicuous leaf veins; Dietes has spear-points and a prominent central leaf vein, especially if viewed from the underside.

Figure 11. Dietes iridioides foliage growing in a nature strip, Burwood, NSW.

Figure 12. Dietes iridioides. Six-petalled, pale yellow flower with three prominent dark orange spots. Some flowers may be white with blue/purple pistils and may have yellow spots.

Figure 13. Dietes flowers turn into wrinkly green pods about the size of your thumb, turning brown and splitting open in thirds to disperse their black seeds. 

Liriope is generally smaller, between 0.4 and 0.8 metres, usually with thinner foliage that could be more easily confused with L. confertifolia, although some ornamental cultivars of Liriope have white stripes extending the length of the leaf. Liriope leaves have a prominent central vein and are generally darker in colour; obvious veins are lacking in Lomandra as mentioned above. Purple flowers emerge in late summer or early autumn, February to April, on dense spikes which develop into unripe green then ripe black berries that resemble currants. Liriope flower stems lack the prominent thorns that Lomandra always has. The berries are poisonous and should not be eaten.

Figure 14. Liriope muscari, foreground. As long as there are purple flower spikes you can be assured it is not Lomandra. Wikicommons.

Figure 15. Liriope spicata berries in varying stages of ripeness. Notice the lack of spikes, unlike Lomandra in figures 5-9 above. Wikicommons.