Glowing Restios in the sun

What are Restio’s?

Restio’s – short for the plant family Restionaceae. This is a family of over 500 species of perennial evergreen, grass-like plants in 58 genera. They are spread across the Southern Hemisphere from South America to New Zealand and Australia but, their greatest abundance is in South Africa.

To look at Restio’s are like a hybrid of grass, bamboo, rush and horsetail – but are related to none of them. They appear to date back to the Crataceous period – some 60 million years ago. This means they were around long before grasses and sedges. Perhaps the only grass-like angiosperms that lived when dinosaurs walked the earth. Based on fossil records it is generally accepted that Restio’s have an ancient Gondwana land origin. This would explain there presence from South America to New Zealand when the land masses had not broken up and the plant group had already radiated into each of the future regions of the Southern Hemisphere.