Rhynchospora pusilla |
Rhynchospora crinipes |
|
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mosquito beaksedge |
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Habit | Plants perennial, densely cespitose, 15–50(–60) cm; rhizomes absent. | Plants perennial, solitary or cespitose, 60–100 cm; rhizomes sometimes present, stoloniferous. |
Culms | erect or arching, leafy toward base, filiform, terete, wiry. |
lax, leafy, mostly excurved, slender. |
Leaves | overtopped by culm; blades linear to filiform, channeled, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, margins deeply involute, apex setaceous. |
shorter than culm; blades ascending, narrowly linear, proximally flat, 2–4(–5) mm wide, apex trigonous, short-subulate, tapering. |
Inflorescences | spikelet clusters 1–2(–3), dense to open, narrowly to broadly turbinate; branches capillary, variously elongate; leafy bracts setaceous, equaling or exceeding clusters. |
spikelet clusters 3–7(–10), dense, all but most distal widely spaced, broadly turbinate to ovate or hemispheric. |
Spikelets | variously brown, ellipsoid, 2–3 mm, apex sharply acute; fertile scales ovate to nearly orbiculate, rounded, 1.2–1.8 mm, apiculate, convexcupulate, midrib slender, mostly included. |
light red-brown, lanciform, 5 mm, apex acuminate; fertile scales lanceolate, 4–4.5 mm, apex acuminate, midrib excurrent as awn. |
Flowers | perianth absent. |
bristles 6, reaching past tubercle base, usually to or slightly past its tip, antrorsely barbellate. |
Fruits | 2–3 per spikelet, 0.7–0.9(–1) mm; body pale, obovoid-lenticular, (0.5–)0.6–0.9 × 0.4–0.5 mm, margin wirelike; surfaces transversely rugulose; tubercle buttonlike, depressed triangular, 0.05–0.1 mm, base lunate atop rounded fruit body. |
2(–4) per spikelet; stipe and receptacle curled-setose, (0.5–)0.6–08(–1) mm; body glossy, brown with pale center, narrowly obovoid-lenticular, 1.2–1.5 mm, surfaces minutely striate, sometimes transversely minutely rugulose with wavy rows of dark minute dots; margins narrow, strong, flowing to tubercle; tubercle narrowly triangular, slightly concave-sided, flattened, setulose-ciliate, 0.7–1.1 mm. |
Rhynchospora pusilla |
Rhynchospora crinipes |
|
Phenology | Fruiting summer–fall. | Fruiting summer–fall. |
Habitat | Moist sands, peats and silts of low meadows, savannas, bogs, seeps, pond shores | Sands, gravels, and peat muck of banks and bars of blackwater streams |
Elevation | 0–300 m (0–1000 ft) | 0–100 m (0–300 ft) |
Distribution |
AL; FL; GA; LA; MS; NC; SC; TX; Mexico; Central America; West Indies |
AL; FL; GA; MS; NC |
Discussion | Clumps of Rhynchospora crinipes are often toppled by floodwaters, these clumps then can root from lower nodes. When clusters of spikelets have ripened fruit, these will germinate while still attached to the parent culm. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Source | FNA vol. 23, p. 220. | FNA vol. 23, p. 233. |
Parent taxa | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora |
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | Phaeocephalum pusillum, R. intermixta | |
Name authority | Chapman ex M. A. Curtis: Amer. J. Sci. Arts, ser. 2, 7: 409. (1849) | Gale: Rhodora 46: 173, plate 823, figs. 2A, B. (1944) |
Web links |