A Coolness Of Restio

Recently a visitor to my stall cast their eye over my collection of Restionaceae and said;

“Come on then! Sell them to me! What’s so great about them, they don’t do it for me what’s so special?”

I’ve been nurturing my particular stock for three years now, grown from seed and managing to prevent the young plants from dying and feeling a pride in my array of green wiry babies only a mother can feel. I trotted out my secret weapon of engagement when anyone asks about them;

“Well” I said

“Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have knees that bend to the ground.. and restios are sommat else!”

The person looked blankly at me. I get that a lot.

The fact is, restios are just COOL! They are one of the oldest plant families in the world with signs in the fossil record of species growing when Africa, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Arabia and the Indian Subcontinent formed the super-continent of Gondwana, hence why you still find restio species endemic to the Antipodes and South America. The vast majority of the family though (three hundred odd) are found in South Africa where they are one of the defining characteristics of the cape floristic region.

Like other “grassy types” they are wind pollinated and restios have developed intricately complex structures distinct to each species to ensure only pollen from their own is received successfully. They are dioecious plants with male and female possessing quite distinct characteristics from each other once you become acquainted. A South African botanist showed me an “easy” way once to tell the males and females of a species apart; males tending to have “looser” culms (stems) so that the wind whips them about more easily for pollen dispersal and female plants having “stiffer” culms to ensure their cup-like spikelets are held more firmly to receive incoming pollen grains. I guess being on the planet so long gives you time to fine-tune your reproductive details like this. The “spikelets”, contain the reproductive flower parts and are arranged together in varying degrees of interesting inflorescent structures from pendulous, dangling, spangly, spiralling, stem hugging, feathery, flamboyant to delightfully catkin’esque.

Restios make incredibly striking garden plants fulfilling many soft planting roles, providing valuable architectural form, some looking like great shaggy beasts, most providing interesting movement and texture with evergreen stems and rusty metallic tonal details in inflorescences, sheaths and seed structures, perfect for winter interest. Not so much light catchers, but definitely great at hosting the sparkling dew of summer and the delicate lacing of autumn and winter cobwebs. Traditionally the tall, smoother stemmed species have been used as thatching and recently the cut flower industry has found merit in the decorative culms.

Obviously, out of the 480 known species of restio in the world, not all of them are going to cherish the Irish climate, but there are a few suited to wetter, gloomier and colder environs between -6 to -10. They do resent root disturbance and though some of the re-sprouting varieties can take a dividing, it’s probably easiest to source seed and grow fresh to bulk numbers and now is a great time to sow seed, just keep the frost off their baby backs if they germinate before winter. Have a go at these!

Baloskion tetraphyllum -

Chondropetalum tectorum

Calopsis paniculata

Cannomois grandis

Elegia - capensis, cuspidata, elephantina, equisetacea, mucrodonta, tectorum

Ischyrolepsis subverticillata

Restio - festuciformis, quadratus

Rhodcoma - capensis, gigantea

Thamnochortus - fruticosus, insignis