Flattened Pipewort

Eriocaulon compressum is polymorphic in habit. Male flowers vary considerably in length and degree of connation, and female flowers are often sterile. Of the southeastern coastal plain species this and the similar, but proportionately smaller, E. lineare, are the most aquatic, the former most common around clay-based ponds, the latter around karst ponds. Unlike the more northern E. aquaticum, these two species seldom frequent the shallows of flowing streams.

Herbs, perennial, 20--70 cm. Leaves linear-attenuate, 5--30 cm, apex subulate. Inflorescences: scape sheaths mostly longer than principal leaves, loose; scapes linear, 1--3 mm wide, multiribbed (ribs lacunar); heads chalk white except for dark gray or near black exserted tips of receptacular bracts, anthers, hemispheric to subglobose, 10--20 mm wide, soft, much flattened when pressed; receptacle pilose; involucral bracts frequently squarrose, later obscured by mature bracteoles and flowers, gray, broadly ovate to oblong or elliptic, 2--3 mm, margins entire, apex rounded or obtuse, glabrous; inner bracts, receptacular bracteoles dark gray, spatulate-linear to oblong, 2--3 mm, margins entire, apex acute with white, club-shaped hairs. Staminate flowers: sepals 2, pale or with dark apex, linear or linear-spatulate, 2--4 mm, apex acute to blunt with mealy white, club-shaped hairs; androphore broadly club-shaped; petals 2, pale, oblong, conspicuously unequal, larger lobe apically fringed with pale, club-shaped hairs, smaller lobe glabrous or with a few hairs at apex; stamens 3--4(--6); anthers black. Pistillate flowers: sepals 2, dark at apex, oblong-spatulate, 2.5--3 mm, abaxially with mealy white, club-shaped hairs, adaxially with translucent hairs; petals 2, pale, oblong-spatulate, apex acute, abaxially with mealy white, club-shaped hairs, adaxially with translucent hairs; pistil 2-carpellate. Seeds dark lustrous brown, broadly ovoid to near round but asymmetric, 0.5 mm, mostly minutely spiny-papillate.

Ala., Del., Fla., Ga., La., Md., Miss., N.J., N.C., S.C., Tex.

Flowering late winter--spring.

Sands and peats of shallow pineland ponds, savanna, seeps, ditches, or low flatwoods; 0--300m.

Eriocaulon decangulare Walter 1788, not Linnaeus 1753; E. gnaphalodes Michaux, sensu Poiret; E. cephalotes Michaux; Sphaerochloa compressa Palisot de Beauvois

Eriocaulon compressum Lam. Encyc. 3: 276. 1789
Eriocaulon decangulare Walt. Fl. Car. 83. 1788. Not E. decangulare L. 1753. Eriocaulon gnaphalodes Michx. Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 165. 1803. Eriocaulon cephalotes Michx.; Poir. in Lam. Encyc. Suppl. 3: 161. 1813. Sphoerochloa compressa Beauv.; Desv. Ann. Sci. Nat. 13: pi. 5,f. 1. 1828. ^Eriocaulon filiformis Raf. Atl. Jour. 121. 1832.
Plants mainly dioecious, sometimes monoecious; stems very short; leaves tufted, membranous, dull, ensiform-linear from a dilated base or plane, 3-25 cm. long, 1.5-6.5 mm. wide at the middle, subulate-acute or long-attenuate, often almost filiform at apex, fenestrately 8-25nerved (the fenestrations conspicuous), glabrous; peduncles mostly solitary, rarely 2 or 3, 1985 cm. long, 10-striate, more or less twisted, mostly subcompressed in drying, glabrous; sheaths loose, mostly equaling or surpassing the leaves (except in submerged plants), 4-22 cm. long, 2-7 mm. wide, fenestrately nerved, many-striate, glabrous, spathaceous at apex, the blade blunt; heads mostly composed of florets of one sex, with rudiments of the other, loose-flowered, 5—14 mm. in diameter, greatly compressed in drying, densely white-villose at the summit; involucral bractlets nitid, grayish-green or brown-flecked, oblong-ovate or elliptic, acute or rarely obtuse, glabrous; receptacle pilose; receptacular bractlets membranous, brown, equaling or shorter than the florets, cuneate-oblong, acute, sparsely pilose toward apex on the back; staminate florets: sepals 2, free, subhyaline throughout <>r only ai base and darker above, subcuneate-oblong, very obtuse, apiculate, often erose, villose toward apex on the back; petaltube whitish, its lobes 2, conspicuously unequal (the anterior one much larger t nan the posterioi one), glanduliferous, pilose at apex; pistillate florets: sepals 2, olivaceous-nigrescent, broadly spatulate-oblong (1.7-2 nun. wide), navicular, acute, en elj pilosi on the back;
petals 2, whitish-hyaline, unguiculate-spatulate, obtuse, pilose on the innei surface; style and the 2 stigmas much exserted in anthesis
Typiv LOCALITY: South Carolina (Fraser).
Distribution: In still shallow water of arid ponds, swamps, and low pinelands on the Coa tal Plain, from southern New Jersey to Florida and Texas. Erroneously reported from (