Flattened Pipewort

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 (