Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Schoenoplectus mucronatus

bog bulrush, rice-field bulrush, rough-seed bulrush
Habit Plants perennial (or annual?); rhizomes hard.
Culms

sharply trigonous, 0.4–1 m × 2–3 mm.
Leaves

1–2;

sheath fronts not pinnate-fibrillose;

ligules absent;

blades absent.
Inflorescences

capitate;

proximal bract divergent to reflexed or rarely erect, trigonous, adaxially channeled, 1–10 cm.
Spikelets

4–20, 7–12 × 4 mm;

scales orange-brown to straw-colored, central region often greenish, broadly obovate, 3–3.5 × 2–2.5 mm, margins ciliolate, apex obtuse to broadly acute, entire, mucronate.
Flowers

perianth members 6, brown, bristlelike, equaling achene, stout, retrorsely spinulose;

anthers 0.8 mm;

styles 3-fid (or some 2-fid in same spikelet).
Achenes

dark to blackish brown, thickly plano-convex to obtusely trigonous, broadly obovoid, 1.7–2.2(–2.5) × 1.2–1.7 mm;

beak 0.2 mm.

Schoenoplectus mucronatus
Phenology Fruiting summer–fall.
Habitat Wet soil to emergent in fresh water, ponds, ditches, rice fields
Elevation 20–300 m (100–1000 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
CA; IA; IL; KY; MO; TN; Eurasia; Africa; Australia [Introduced in North America]
Discussion

Schoenoplectus mucronatus was collected before 1900 in New Brunswick and New Jersey; apparently the plants did not persist. It has also been reported from New York and Pennsylvania; I have not seen specimens. Elsewhere, it has become firmly established. It is an important ricefield weed in California (M. K. Bellue 1947), where it was first observed in 1942 and is called “ricefield bulrush.” It was first observed in the Midwest in 1971. Schoenoplectus mucronatus is cultivated for wildlife food near the Columbia River in Clark County, Washington, but apparently is not established in that area. Schoenoplectus mucronatus is very similar to S. triangulatus (Roxburgh) Soják of Asia, which differs in its larger spikelets, spikelet scales, and anthers.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 23, p. 58.
Parent taxa Cyperaceae > Schoenoplectus > sect. Actaeogeton
Sibling taxa
S. acutus, S. americanus, S. californicus, S. deltarum, S. erectus, S. etuberculatus, S. hallii, S. heterochaetus, S. pungens, S. purshianus, S. saximontanus, S. smithii, S. subterminalis, S. tabernaemontani, S. torreyi, S. triqueter
Synonyms Scirpus mucronatus
Name authority (Linnaeus) Palla: Verh. K. K. Zool.-Bot. Ges. Wien 38(Sitzungsber.): 49. (1888)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America, OregonFlora, UW Burke Herbarium

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers