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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Cyperaceae
Cyperus bifax

Citation: C.B. Clarke, Kew Bull. add. ser. 8:13 (1908).

Synonymy: C. retzii Nees in Wight, Contr. Bot. India 82 (1834), nom. illegit.; C. rotundus L. subsp. retzii (Nees) Kük., Pflanzenr. 101:114 (1935).

Common name: Downs nut-grass.

Description:
Perennial, 50-75 cm high, with wiry rhizomes bearing prominent ellipsoid fibrous-coated tubers; stems slender, triquetrous throughout; leaves grasslike, narrow, usually shorter than the stems; bracts 2-4, the lower about as long as or longer than the inflorescence.

Umbel usually simple, of 4-8 slender rigid rays; spikelets brown, 12-24-flowered, rather close together in small spikes of 3-10, 10-20 mm long, c. 2.5 mm wide; rhachilla prominently winged; glumes 3.5-4 mm long, not mucronate, keeled, with nerved sides, soon spreading and inrolling.

Nut narrow-obovoid, c. 1.5 x 0.8 mm, bluntly trigonous, with convex sides, grey-black, smooth, rather shiny, tip at the base of the style white- or black-pointed, about onethird as long as the glume.

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 157.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: LE, FR.   All mainland States.   Africa; Asia; South America.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: April — Aug.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available


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