Eleocharis cellulosa |
Eleocharis flavescens |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gulf Coast spikerush, Gulfcoast spikesedge |
pale spike-rush, wrinkle-sheath spike-rush, yellow spikerush, yellow spikesedge |
|||||
Habit | Plants perennial; rhizomes 1–4 mm thick, soft to hard, longer internodes 3–7.5 cm, scales 5 mm, tubers absent. | Plants with creeping rhizomes 0.5–1 mm thick. | ||||
Culms | terete or obtusely trigonous, 30–80 cm × 1–5 mm, soft to hard, not septate-nodulose, internally spongy, transverse septa incomplete; plants never forming filiform, flaccid culms. |
3–42 cm × 0.3–0.6 mm. |
||||
Leaves | distal leaf sheaths persistent, membranous, apex acute to acuminate, often prolonged into a slender awn to 4 mm. |
distal leaf sheaths often disintegrating, thinly membranous-translucent, inflated distally, often wrinkled, apex blunt. |
||||
Spikelets | not proliferous, 14–54 × 3–5.6 mm; rachilla joints without winglike remnants of floral scales; proximal scale empty, amplexicaulous, 2.5–4.9 mm; floral scales 40–180, 2–3 per mm of rachilla, stramineous to pale brown, flanks sometimes minutely dotted reddish, usually with pale to dark brown, reddish, or purplish submarginal band, obovate to suborbicular, widest in middle, 3.4–4.5(–6) × 3–4.8 mm, cartilaginous, membranous toward margins, margins broadly translucent, membranous, apex rounded. |
ellipsoid, 1.5–9 × 1–3.5 mm, apex acute to acuminate; proximal scale without flower, not amplexicaulous; floral scales to 65, 5–7 per mm of rachilla, loosely appressed to appressed, elliptic, 1–3 × 0.4–1.6 mm, membranous, apex acute. |
||||
Flowers | perianth bristles 6–7, medium brown to pale brown or reddish, slender, proximally slightly flattened, subequal to unequal, mostly exceeding achene, 2–3.4 mm, smooth or sometimes finely retrorsely spinulose; anthers reddish brown, 1.7–2.5 mm; styles 3-fid. |
perianth bristles (0–)5–8, typically 7, white to stramineous, spinules dense to few; styles 2-fid, rarely 3-fid. |
||||
Achenes | brown, biconvex, obpyriform, 2.2–2.8 × 1.3–1.9 mm, markedly sculptured at 10–15X, each face with (17–)20–24 rows of isodiametric to slightly transversely elongated cells, apex narrowed to a stout, often pale, spongy region 0.8–1.1 mm wide at base, 1/2–3/4 of achene width. |
stramineous to green or dark brown, biconvex, rarely trigonous, obovoid to obpryiform, 0.4–1.1 × 0.3–0.8 mm, very finely reticulate at 40X. |
||||
Tubercles | dark brown, lamelliform to pyramidal, 0.1–0.5 × 0.2–0.5 mm. |
whitish to stramineous or green, 0.2–0.7 × 0.2–0.4 mm, apex acute to acuminate. |
||||
Eleocharis cellulosa |
Eleocharis flavescens |
|||||
Phenology | Fruiting late spring–winter. | |||||
Habitat | Brackish to saline marshes, shores, ditches, mostly coastal, often abundant or dominant | |||||
Elevation | 0 (Florida)–600 (Arkansas, Texas) m (0 (Florida)–2000 (Arkansas, Texas) ft) | |||||
Distribution |
AL; AR; FL; GA; MS; NC; SC; TX; Mexico; West Indies; Central America (Nicaragua)
|
AL; AR; AZ; CA; CT; DE; FL; GA; ID; IL; IN; LA; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MS; MT; NC; NH; NJ; NY; OH; PA; RI; SC; TX; UT; VA; VT; WI; WY; NB; NS; ON; QC; South America; temperate North America; West Indies
|
||||
Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). The varieties of Eleocharis flavescens are difficult to delimit, especially in the south, and identifications of some specimens to variety are problematic. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
|||||
Key |
|
|||||
Source | FNA vol. 23, p. 118. | FNA vol. 23, p. 100. | ||||
Parent taxa | Cyperaceae > Eleocharis > subg. Limnochloa | Cyperaceae > Eleocharis > subg. Eleocharis > sect. Eleogenus > ser. Maculosae | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Scirpus flavescens | |||||
Name authority | Torrey: Ann. Lyceum Nat. Hist. New York 3: 298. (1836) | (Poiret) Urban: Symb. Antill. 4: 116. (1903) | ||||
Web links |
|