Habit: Perennial herb, erect, 50--200 cm, rhizomed, tubers durable.
Stem: simple, sharply 3-angled, glabrous or angles scabrous, evident internal air cavities 0, not hollow.
Leaf: basal and cauline, 3-ranked; sheath closed, long; ligule 0; blade generally present, long, thin, flat, V-shaped near base, keeled abaxially, margin, keel +- scabrous.
Inflorescence: 1, terminal, panicle- (or head-) like, appearing with leaves; branches often scabrous; inflorescence bracts like leaf blades, main 1 > inflorescence; spikelets +- ovate, not +- flat, flower bracts spiraled, >= 25, each with 1 flower in axil, +- ovate, membranous to papery, puberulent (glabrous in age), brown to +- colorless, tip notched 0.5--1 mm, generally with curved awn often broken off.
Flower: bisexual; perianth of 3--6 bristles, <= fruit, +- straight, stout, barbed; stamens 3, anthers >= 1.5 mm; style 1, thread-like, base not enlarged; stigmas 2--3.
Fruit: generally obovate, smooth, brown, mucronate; wall cells small, solid or large, hollow (under dissecting microscope).
Ecology: Wetlands, often emergent.
Species In Genus: 7--15 species: temperate, subtropics.
Etymology: (Greek, bolbos, a bulb, and schoenos a rush, reed, in reference to the tubers)
Note: Intermediates (putative hybrids) between species cause major problems in classification, identification.
Unabridged Note: Fruit wall anatomy (+- easily seen with a dissecting microscope in a hand-made section) including diagnostic characters that are correlated with fruit buoyancy and persistence of bristles on shed fruit. Putative interspecific hybridization causes major taxonomic confusion; putative hybrids generally occur with their parents, are intermediate between them in all characters, often bear apparently normal fruit that vary in shape within one spikelet, and form persistent clones.Jepson eFlora Author: S. Galen Smith
Reference: Browning et al. 1995 Brittonia 47:433--445; Smith 2002 FNANM 23:37--44
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Bolboschoenus
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