Tracy's Beak Sedge

Rhynchospora tracyi frequently forms clones extending for acres by means of its long slender rhizomes. Its wandlike, terete, supple culms, and round-capitate clusters of spikelets suggest a rush more than a sedge.

Plants perennial, clonal, to 120 cm; rhizomes scaly, slender, less than 2 mm thick. Culms erect, leafy based, wandlike, nearly terete, multiribbed. Leaves ascending or erect, longest nearly equaling culm; principal blades linear, involute cylindric, to 3 mm wide, apex tapering, subulate. Inflorescences terminal, heads 1–4, dense, macelike, 1–1.5 mm thick; involucral bracts leafy, proximalmost overtopping inflorescence. Spikelets greenish, lance ovoid, 5–6 mm, apex acuminate; fertile scales boat-shaped, 5 mm, apex acute to short acuminate, midrib slightly excurrent or not. Flowers: perianth bristles 6, exceeding fruit body, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1 per spikelet, 6–8(–8.7) mm; body pale green brown, laterally compressed, obcordiform, 2.5–3(–4) mm, margins thick, rounded, not crimped, apex barely exserted, setulose, surfaces nearly plane, minutely cancellate (latticed); tubercle (style base) linear, angled, 4–6 mm, much narrower than fruit summit, setulose.

Ala., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex.; West Indies; Central America (Belize).

Fruiting late spring–fall.

Emergent in shallows of cypress domes, marshes and swales, ditches and ponds; 0–100m.

Ceratoschoenus capitatus Chapman, Fl. South. U.S., 529. 1860; Phaeocephalum tracyi (Britton) House; Schoenus triceps Vahl