Rhynchospora harveyi |
Rhynchospora floridensis |
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Harvey's beaksedge |
Florida whitetop |
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Habit | Plants perennial, cespitose, 70–110 cm; rhizomes absent. | Plants perennial, cespitose, 20–50 cm, wiry; rhizomes absent. | ||||
Culms | erect to excurved, leafy, obscurely trigonous, slender. |
erect to spreading, leafybased; scapes nearly filiform, nearly trigonous, few 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, exceeded by scape; blades filiform to linear, proximally flat or involute, becoming involute, 0.4–2 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, leafyinvolucrate, 0.5–1 cm wide; involucral bracts 3–6, spreading to recurved, whitebased, greentipped, narrowly linear, longest bract elongatesubulate, 4–8 cm × 2–5 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, 4–6 mm; scales several, boatshaped, basal ones with ciliolate keel, fertile ones 3–3.8 mm. |
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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. |
1–1.2 mm; body yellow to black, nearly orbicular, tumidly lenticular, 0.8–1 × 0.6–0.7(–1) mm; surface lattices shortlinear, vertical in fine undulating rows, with ends raised to rounded, transverse rugulosities; tubercle lowtriangular, lunate, 0.2–0.3 mm, apex acute, blunt or apiculate. |
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Rhynchospora harveyi |
Rhynchospora floridensis |
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Phenology | Fruiting spring–fall, or all year. | |||||
Habitat | Moist open areas over reef limestones, rocky pine savanna | |||||
Elevation | 0–50 m (0–200 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
AL; AR; FL; GA; KS; LA; MO; MS; NC; OK; SC; TN; TX; VA; se United States; Midwestern |
FL; Mexico (Chiapas, Yucatán); West Indies (Bahamas); Central America (Belize) |
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Rhynchospora floridensis is much like R. colorata, with which it is often associated; it can be easily distinguished by its strictly cespitose habit and its ciliolate spikelet scale keels. (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. 216. | ||||
Parent taxa | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Dichromena floridensis | |||||
Name authority | W. Boott: Bot. Gaz. 9: 85. (1884) | (Britton) H. Pfeiffer: Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 49: 82. (1940) | ||||
Web links |