Rhynchospora harveyi |
Rhynchospora colorata |
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Harvey's beaksedge |
starrush whitetop, white star sedge |
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Habit | Plants perennial, cespitose, 70–110 cm; rhizomes absent. | Plants perennial, cespitose or solitary, to 70 cm; rhizomes slender, scaly, to 2 mm thick. | ||||
Culms | erect to excurved, leafy, obscurely trigonous, slender. |
erect, slender, leafy-based, trigonous, several-ribbed. |
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Leaves | spreading to ascending, shorter than culm, crowded toward culm base; blades linear, proximally flat, 1–3 mm wide, gradually involute, apically trigonous, subulate. |
spreading to erect, overtopped by culm; blades narrowly linear, proximally flattened, 0.5–3 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous. |
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Inflorescences | spikelet clusters 1–4, dense to open, mostly irregularly turbinate; peduncles ascending, branches spreading to erect, ultimate branches with many spikelets; leafy bracts setaceoustipped, usually exceeding all clusters, or at least all but the distal. |
terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafy-involucrate; involucral bracts several, flaring to recurved, white from broadened base nearly to median, then green to tapered tip, longer bracts 13 cm × 2–7 mm. |
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Spikelets | light redbrown or brown, broadly ellipsoid to lanceoloid, 3–4 mm, apex acute to acuminate; fertile scales ovate to obovate or suborbiculate, 2–3.5 mm apex acute to rounded or emarginate, midrib included or exserted as mucro. |
white, ovoid, 5–7 mm, apex acute; fertile scales many, boatshaped, sharply curvedkeeled, 3–4(–5) mm, apex acute or blunt. |
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Flowers | perianth bristles mostly 6, rarely reaching fruit midbody, antrorsely barbellate. |
perianth absent. |
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Fruits | mostly 1 per spikelet, 2–2.5 mm, body dark brown, obovoid to subglobose, tumid or lenticular, 1.5–1.7 mm, transversely finely rugose to nearly level, intervals with very small, pitlike alveoli. |
several per spikelet, 1.5–1.7(–2) mm; body yellow to mahogany, broadly pyriformobovoid, tumidly lenticular, 1 × 0.5–0.7 mm, widest at apex, margins thickened, interrupted at base of tubercle; surfaces transversely undulaterugose, ridges contiguous, of shortlinear papillae; tubercle broadly triangular, 0.5–0.6 mm, graycrustaceous, apex short acuminate. |
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2n | = 12. |
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Rhynchospora harveyi |
Rhynchospora colorata |
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Phenology | Fruiting late spring–summer. | |||||
Habitat | Sands, peats, and silt of interdunal swales, shores, meadowy swales, and marsh edges, sometimes fens, usually on circumneutral or basic substrates | |||||
Elevation | 0–300 m (0–1000 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
AL; AR; FL; GA; KS; LA; MO; MS; NC; OK; SC; TN; TX; VA; se United States; Midwestern |
AL; AR; FL; GA; LA; MS; NC; SC; TX; VA; Mexico; Central America; West Indies; South America (French Guiana)
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Rhynchospora colorata is a slender and clonal version of R. latifolia, with a distinct preference for more basic substrates; involucral bracts are very slender and have a longer portion of green, usually reaching well proximal to midbract. See also 16. Rhynchospora latifolia. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 23, p. 231. | FNA vol. 23, p. 215. | ||||
Parent taxa | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Schoenus coloratus, Dichromena cephalotes, Dichromena colorata, Dichromena leucocephala, R. drummondiana, Scirpus cephalotes | |||||
Name authority | W. Boott: Bot. Gaz. 9: 85. (1884) | (Linnaeus) H. Pfeiffer: Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 38: 89. (1935) | ||||
Web links |