Xanthorrhoea is an Australian native plant genus. Commonly called grass trees, Xanthorrhoea plants are also known as balga grass to the Australian aborigines, which is their word for black boy. The Aborigines probably called these plants balga because after a wild fire, the bottom leaves burn away revealing a singed black trunk with long green reed like leaves extending from the top of the trunk giving the appearance of child like black figures.

It can take many years to expose the trunk, and that happens on larger plants by manually cutting away the bottom leaves that have turned brown, as the result of a wildfire burning them away, or by the plant growing large enough to expose the trunk beneath the leaves.