Cyperus esculentus L., it is a perennial herb. Rhizome short with many fibrous roots, sending many subterranean slender stolons, covered by distant scales, ending by sub globose or ovoid small tubers. Stems, 10-40 cm, rigid, triquetrous, glabrous, carrying numerous leaves at their base, slightly thick and covered with brownish sheaths. Leaves usually shorter than the stems, sometimes exceeding the stem or nearly equal, display or erect and recurved, 3-8 mm wide, plane, little rigid, externally keeled, with revolute margins, glabrous, scabrous at the top of margins and keel, acute. Leafy bracts 3-6, the 1-2 inferior longer than the inflorescence. Inflorescence simple or compound, loose, 5-10 slender, rays, c. 2-10 cm long, sheathed at their bases by prophyll tubulous, sometimes elongated towards the back into a short limb. Spikes large ovate, loose, 5-15 spikelets. Spikelets distichous, ± divaricate, linear-oblong, obtuse, 5-12 x 2 mm, with 8-10 flowers; rachis large, winged, wings hyalinous with tapering end, usually completely coalescent with the superior glume. Glumes membranous, little densely imbricate, little display at the top, ovales, obtuse or truncate, sometimes little mucronulate, ± keeled, 7-nerved, yellowish, golden, or reddish, hyalinous towards the margins, scarlet at the top. Stamens 3, anthers linear, c. 1.2 mm, yellow, with the connective prolonging into an ovate, short, reddish appendix. Style long, slender. Stigmas 3, long, much exserted. Achene 1̸2 of the glume, obovate, trigonous, obtuse, apiculate, greyish-brown, glossy, very finely dotted, c. 1.2-1.5 x 1-1.2 mm.
Flowering in: Apr-Dec.
Leave a Reply