Nardoo

Nardoo, the Australian name for Marsilia macropus, one of the Rhizocarpeae or Hydropterideae, a small group allied to the club-mosses. They have delicate quatrefoil leaves on slender stalks, and small sporangia containing starchy spores which are used as a bread-stuff. The plant is abundant in swamps in the interior of Australia, where the survivors of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition starved on its sorry produce.