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

Sphenoclea zeylanica

chickenspike
Habit Herbs 18.5–97 cm.
Stems

± terete, green, 2–10 mm diam. at mid stem, often proximally spongy and rooting from proximal nodes where submerged.
Leaves

petiole 0.3–2.7 cm;

blade 1–13.8 × 0.3–5.7 cm.
Peduncles

0.4–10.3 cm.
Spikes

narrowly ovoid to cylindric, 0.5–10.5 × 0.3–1.3 cm.
Flowers

calyx lobes broadly ovate to deltate, 1.2–1.5 × 1.5–1.8 mm, enlarging in fruit, obtuse to rounded, ± erose;

corolla caducous, 1.8–2.3 mm, lobes oblong, length 1–2 times tube, apex obtuse to acute, ± erose;

filaments 0.1–0.2 mm;

anthers 0.5 × 0.6 mm;

styles 0.3–0.4 mm;

stigmas 0.4 mm diam.
Capsules

sessile, 2–3 × 3–4 mm, lids 3–4 mm diam.
Seeds

0.4–0.5 mm.
2n

= 24.

Sphenoclea zeylanica
Phenology Flowering Jun–Nov.
Habitat Rice fields, ditches, shallow margins of ponds and lakes, stream banks, wet disturbed soils, sometimes emergent.
Elevation 0–300 m. (0–1000 ft.)
Distribution
from FNA
AL; AR; FL; GA; LA; MO; MS; NC; OK; SC; TX; Asia; Africa [Introduced in North America; introduced also in Mexico, West Indies, Central America, South America]
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Sphenoclea zeylanica is a common weed of rice fields and other wet disturbed sites in the coastal prairies of southern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. It occurs sporadically in other southeastern states, and its dispersal is correlated with rice agriculture. The earliest records in the United States were collected in Louisiana about 1850, where it was probably introduced as a contaminant of rice seed (J. R. Carter et al. 2014).

West African plants with shorter oblong spikes, pink corollas, and stamens with longer filaments are sometimes segregated as the endemic Sphenoclea dalzielii N. E. Brown (S. M. H. Jafri, http://www.tropicos.org/Name/ 5504127).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 14.
Parent taxa Sphenocleaceae > Sphenoclea
Name authority Gaertner: Fruct. Sem. Pl. 1: 113, plate 24, fig. 5. (1788)
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 Fabaceae, Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America

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