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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Cyperaceae
Cyperus laevigatus

Citation: L., Mant. Alt. 179 (1771).

Synonymy: C. distachyos All., Auct. Fl. Pedem. 48 (1789).

Common name: Boredrain sedge.

Description:
Rhizome creeping, often long; stems tufted or distant, sometimes curved, rigid, often rather stout, more or less trigonous, striate, sometimes pitted, mostly 10-45 cm high; leaves usually reduced to coloured membranous sheaths, some-times the uppermost with a short rigid stout lamina; bracts 2, the lower erect, appearing as though a continuation of the stem, longer or much longer than the inflorescence, the upper glume-like.

Spikelets 1-16, spreading in a single dense apparently lateral sessile head, a deep reddish-brown or purplish to pallid, oblong-lanceolate, turgid, 5-20 mm long, 2-4 mm wide, 12-30-flowered, often curved or twisted; rhachilla stout, tetragonous, not winged; glumes dense, rigid, concave, mucronulate, several-nerved, 2-3 mm long; style 2-branched.

Nut oblong-ovoid or -obovoid, subacute, shortly cuneate to the wide base, c. 1.6 x 0.9 mm, plano- or concavo-convex, olive-green-brown, shiny, with a transparent faint reticulate-papillose layer, base and tip white, about as long as the glume.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: NW, LE, GT, FR, EA, EP, NL, MU, SL, SE.   W.Aust.; Qld; N.S.W.   Cosmopolitan.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: throughout the year.


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

Biology: The coastal form differs from the inland.

Author: Not yet available


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