Dimeria has two tough racemes (in most of the species) of spikelets, from which the name of the genus is presumably derived. In Greek, dis means ‘double’ and, meros means ‘part’.
The genus Dimeria was created in 1810 by Robert Brown. (Type: D. acinaciformis R. Br. - an endemic species of Australia). The plant was collected by Joseph Banks (1743--1820) and Daniel Carl Solander (1736--1782) in 1770. They were passengers on Captain James Cook’s First voyage (1768--1771) in the H. M. S. Endeavour. During this trip, they explored many Asian and Australasian countries and deposited the massive plant collections from these regions at Banks herbarium. The type specimen of the genus Dimeria R. Br. is now housed at British Museum, London (BM).
