Gondwanan Grasses in the Australian Flora

All the currently recognized major groups of the Poaceae (the grass family) with the exception of the pooids, are postulated to have had a Gondwanan origin. There is no hard evidence for this belief, the fossil record of the family being extremely poor and giving little assistance in the study of the palaeogeography and evolution of taxa. The evolution of the major groups, and in some cases genera and species of grasses, is reviewed in relation to Gondwanic events, both generally and in relation to Australia, in the light of studies from biogeography, plate tectonics, numerical methods and cytogeography.