Xyrideae
A small natural order of perennial or rarely annual, Rush-like or Sedge-like, tufted herbs, broadly dispersed over the warmer regions of the globe, often growing in watery places. Flowers hermaphrodite, scarcely irregular, in terminal, solitary heads of densely imbricating, rigid, scarious, one-flowered bracts; perianth of six segments in two series, the three outer segments calycine, the three inner petaloid; stamens three to six, inserted on the inner perianth segments, three opposite fertile, the others sterile penicillate, or obsolete; filaments filiform; anthers two-celled. Capsule one-celled, loculidally three-valved, or three-celled and fenestrate at base, operculate above; scapes erect, simple. Leaves radical, rosulate or clustered, linear or rarely linear-lanceolate, sheathing at base, often equitant. Roots fibrous. The leaves and roots of these plants are used in the cure of itch in India and South America. The order embraces two genera--Abolboda and Xyris--and less than fifty species.