Rhynchospora pusilla |
Rhynchospora latifolia |
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sandswamp whitetop |
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Habit | Plants perennial, densely cespitose, 15–50(–60) cm; rhizomes absent. | Plants perennial, cespitose or solitary, to 100 cm; rhizomes scaly, 3–4 mm thick. |
Culms | erect or arching, leafy toward base, filiform, terete, wiry. |
arching or erect, leafy-based, distally wandlike, terete, multiribbed. |
Leaves | overtopped by culm; blades linear to filiform, channeled, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, margins deeply involute, apex setaceous. |
ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape; blades linear, proximally flat, 2.5–5 mm wide, apex subulate, trigonous. |
Inflorescences | spikelet clusters 1–2(–3), dense to open, narrowly to broadly turbinate; branches capillary, variously elongate; leafy bracts setaceous, equaling or exceeding clusters. |
terminal, headlike clusters of spikelets, clusters dense, leafy-involucrate; involucral bracts several, spreading to downcurved, longest 6–13 cm × 5–10 mm, mostly white to midbract, then green, abruptly narrowly linear. |
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. |
white, ovoid, 5–7 mm; fertile scales boatshaped, sharply curved-keeled, 5 mm, apex acute. |
Flowers | perianth absent. |
perianth absent. |
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. |
several per spikelet, 1.5–2 mm; body yellowish to deep brown, tumidly lenticular, broadly obovoid to orbicular or oblate, 1.5 mm, widest at or toward midbody, margins flowing to tubercle; surfaces with many fine rows of vertical shallow lattices, their contiguous ends making transverse rows of papillae; tubercle crescent-based, depressed-triangular, 0.5 mm, apex acute. |
2n | = 12. |
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Rhynchospora pusilla |
Rhynchospora latifolia |
|
Phenology | Fruiting summer–fall. | Fruiting late spring–summer. |
Habitat | Moist sands, peats and silts of low meadows, savannas, bogs, seeps, pond shores | Sands and peats of bogs in pine savannas and flatwoods |
Elevation | 0–300 m (0–1000 ft) | 0–200 m (0–700 ft) |
Distribution |
AL; FL; GA; LA; MS; NC; SC; TX; Mexico; Central America; West Indies |
AL; FL; GA; LA; MS; NC; SC; TX
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Discussion | A specimen collected near Tullahoma, Tennessee, reported as Dichromena latifolia (A. Gattinger 1901), was later destroyed by fire. I did not see the specimen, nor was a description of it published. Because extant populations of the similar Rhynchospora colorata are just over the border in Alabama, that species is likely to have been the one found by Gattinger. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Source | FNA vol. 23, p. 220. | FNA vol. 23. |
Parent taxa | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora | Cyperaceae > Rhynchospora |
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | Phaeocephalum pusillum, R. intermixta | Dichromena latifolia, R. stellata var. latifolia |
Name authority | Chapman ex M. A. Curtis: Amer. J. Sci. Arts, ser. 2, 7: 409. (1849) | (Baldwin) W. W. Thomas: Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 37: 86. (1984) |
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