Narrow Pipewort

Eriocaulon lineare closely resembles E. texanum, although it has paler bracts and flowers and a glabrous (rather than pilose) receptacle. Eriocaulon lineare blooms later and is most common in the margins or shallows of ponds, rather than in the sphagnous bogs favored by E. texanum.

Herbs, perennial, 6--20 cm (--80 cm when submersed). Leaves linear-attenuate, 1--10 cm (--20 cm when submersed), apex filiform. Inflorescences: scape sheaths mostly shorter than leaves in emergents, exceeding them in drier sites; scapes linear, 1 mm wide, 4--7-ribbed; heads (young or mature) very pale, hemispheric to nearly globose, rarely short-cylindric, 4--10 mm wide, soft, flattened when pressed; receptacle glabrous; involucral bracts sometimes squarrose, obscured by reflexed bracteoles and flowers of mature heads, straw-colored, orbiculate to ovate, 2--2.5 mm, margins entire, apex rounded, with white, club-shaped hairs; receptacular bracts and bracteoles pale except for grayish midzone, obovate to cuneate, 2 mm, margins entire, apex acute, ciliate, distal abaxial surfaces with white, club-shaped hairs. Staminate flowers: sepals 2, grayish, oblong-linear, curvate, 1.5--2 mm, apex acute with white, club-shaped hairs; androphore club-shaped; petals 2, pale, triangular, 0.5 mm, ciliate, hairs club-shaped; stamens 4; anthers black. Pistillate flowers: sepals 2, basally pale, darkening distally to grayish, gray-green, or gray-brown, narrowly oblong-obovate, curved, 2 mm, apex rounded, abaxially with white, club-shaped hairs; petals 2, yellow-white, broadly spatulate, flat, 1.5--2 mm, apex rounded, abaxially with white hairs, adaxially with white or clear hairs; pistil 2-carpellate. Seeds dark red-brown, ovoid or ellipsoid, 0.5--0.75 mm, faintly rectangular-reticulate, often papillate in lines.

Ala., Fla., Ga., N.C.

Flowering mostly summer--fall.

Sandy or peaty shores, hypericum ponds, wet savanna, southern coastal plain terraces; 0--100m.

Eriocaulon lineare Small, Fl. SE. U. S. 236, 1328. 1903
Plants monoecious; stems very short; leaves very thin and pellucid, erect or recurved. 1.3-5 cm. long, 1-2 mm. wide at the middle (in deep water often elongate to 29 cm. and to 4 mm. wide), long-attenuate at apex, fenestrately 3-5-nerved (the fenestrations conspicuous), sparingly pubescent or subglabrate; peduncles deep-green, 3.5-30 cm. long, about 1 mm. in diameter (in deep water elongate to 63 cm. and to 5 mm. wide), 4-7-costate, often compressed in drying, frequently merely several-striate and fenestrate, obscurely twisted; sheaths equaling or surpassing the leaves (except in submerged plants), 1-7.5 cm. long (to 18 cm. long in deep water); heads depressed-hemispheric or subglobose, 5—10 mm. in diameter, whitevillose; involucral bractlets subhyaline or scarious, puberulent toward apex, the inner ones rhombic and acute, the outer ones subrotund; receptacle glabrous; receptacular bractlets hyaline below, dark-gray toward apex, spatulate or cuneate, subnavicular, acuminate, pilose toward apex; staminate florets: sepals 2, free, hyaline below, dark-gray toward apex, obovate or spatulate, navicular, acute, narrowly carinate-winged, sparsely pilose toward apex; petal-tube white, its lobes 2, small, linear, slightly unequal, glanduliferous within at apex, ciliate at apex; pistillate florets: sepals 2, hyaline at base, gray toward apex, broadly spatulate, navicular, acute, pilose at apex, with a subhyaline wing wider than that on the staminate florets; petals 2, free, linear, glanduliferous at apex within, pilose on both surfaces at apex, style about as long as or shorter than the ovary; stigmas 2, about as long as the ovary.
Type locality: Wet woods, Eocene geologic formation, overlaid by Lafayette and Columbia, Bullock County, Georgia (R. M. Harper 830).
Distribution: Wet woods and moist pinelands on the Coastal Plain from North Carolina to Florida and Alabama.