Kyllinga brevifolia

Reports of Kyllinga brevifolia from Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia should be referred to as K. gracillima.

Plants perennial, cespitose or not, long-creeping rhizomatous. Culms sometimes spaced to 3 cm apart, (5–)12–25(–55) cm, smooth. Leaves flat, 2–21 cm × 1.5–3.5 mm. Inflorescences: spikes 1–3, 4–7 × 4 mm; bracts 3–4, longest ± erect, others ascending to horizontal, flat, 1.5–18 cm × 1–3.3 mm. Spikelets (20–)40–60(–100), pale greenish or reddish brown, ovate, (2.2–)2.5–2.8(–3.2) × (0.6–)0.7–0.8(–1.2) mm; floral scales laterally 2–3-veined, elliptic to ovate, 1.8–3 × (0.8–)1.1–1.6 mm, midvein not winged, apex mucronate; stamens (1–)2; anthers 0.8–1.1 mm; style 0.6–1.2 mm; stigmas 0.5–1.5 mm. Achenes brown, substipitate or stipitate, ellipsoid to oblong-ellipsoid, 1–1.2(–1.3) × 0.6–0.8 mm, stipe, if present, 0.1–0.2 mm, apex obtuse to subtruncate, apiculate, papillate.

Perennial, 5-35 cm. Rhizome horizontal, long-creeping, c. 2mm diam., aerial stems arising from every second node. Stem 0.5-1.5 mm diam., sharply trigonous, smooth, green. Leaves much shorter than stem; sheaths 10 - 65 mm, grey or brown, sometimes with reddish tint, scarious; blades up to 10 cm, 1.5-3 mm wide, flat, slightly keeled, sometimes folded, margins smooth, apex flat, short, acute, scabrous along margins and midrib below. Inflorescence a single, round cluster of c. 100 spikes, 5-7 mm; 2-3 bracts foliose, spreading, to 80 mm. Spike c. 2.5 x 1 mm, compressed, pedicel 0.2 mm, glume-like bract scarious, glume-like prophyll scarious; glumes 2, opposite, c. 2.5 mm, keeled, folded, mid-nerve green, smooth or scabrous, acuminate, sides scarious, with 2-3 prominent nerves, white or yellowish and often with brown dots. Stamens 3. Nut c. 1 mm, compressed, obovoid, yellowish, surface papillose.

Ala., Calif., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., Okla., S.C., Tex.; Mexico; West Indies; Central America; South America; Asia; Africa; Australia.

Distribution: Pantropical; often introduced , e.g., to Caucasus; Azores and Portugal (in Fl. Europ.); in Africa S of Sahara; Russian Far East, Japan, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia, N and S America.

Fl. Per.: June - September (October).

Fruiting summer.

Damp grasslands, shorelines, ditches, croplands; 0–200m.

Periodically wet meadows, rice fields.

Cyperus brevifolius (Rottbøll) Endlicher ex Hasskarl

Cyperus brevifolius (Rottb.) Hassk., Cat. Hort. bot. Bogor.: 24. 1844; R.R.Stewart, l.c. 87; Kern in Reinwardtia 2: fig. 14. 1952; in Van Steenis, Fl. Males. 7, 3: fig. 70. 1974. Koyama, Fl. Taiwan: pl. 1345. 1979. Noltie, Fl. Bhutan 3,1: fig. 30, a-b. 1994.