A dioecious, tufted perennial. A spectacular plant up to 1.2m in height.

Culm: Unbranched with tightly wrapped sheaths, which have very small hairs on the margins.

Flowerhead: Male inflorescences are bushy and the female flowers occur singly in large spikelets.

Nut: Nuts are smooth with a knobbly cap, a useful tool for distinguishing it from Ceratocaryum argenteum which produces pitted nuts. It is also a much taller plant than Ceratocaryum caespitosum.

The Ceratocaryum caespitosum nuts are without elaiosomes and are 7-9mm long.

The very large seeds of this Restio are the same roundish shape, colour and smell as the dung pellets of buck. Dung beetles are attracted to them, they roll the pellets away and bury them underground in burrows. After trying to eat them or lay their eggs in them the seeds are abandoned where they are protected from fires and germinate when conditions are right.

Coleopterrochony : a plant which bluffs an insect into dispersing and planting its seeds.

Distribution: Kogelbaai to Stanford.

Note: Greek: ceras = a horn, -atus = likeness, caryon = nut.