EcoFlora - Rhynchospora grayi

Rhynchospora grayi Kunth
Family: Cyperaceae Gray's Beak Sedge	FNA Gleason & Cronquist Resources Robert Kral in Flora of North America (vol. 23) Plants perennial, cespitose, 10-100 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect or excurved, leafy, obscurely trigonous, slender, firm. Leaves shorter than culms; blades spreading to ascending, linear, proximally flat, 2-4 mm wide, apex involute, then trigonous, subulate. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1-4, loose to dense, broadly turbinate, lobed or hemispheric; peduncles and branches ascending; leafy bracts exceeding proximal, sometimes distal, clusters. Spikelets light red brown, ellipsoid or narrowly ovoid, 4-5 mm, apex acute to acuminate; fertile scales broadly ovate, 3.5-4.5 mm, apex acute or acuminate, apiculate. Flowers: perianth bristles mostly 6, reaching from fruit midbody to tubercle tip or beyond, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1(-2) per spikelet, 2.5-3 mm; body dark brown, broadly, tumidly obovoid, 2-2.5 × 2-2.5 mm, apically buttressed to tubercle; surfaces finely transversely rugulose or nearly level, with fine transverse rows of pits or low papillae, often appearing nearly smooth; tubercle low conic, 0.4-0.6 mm, apiculate. Fruiting spring-summer. Sandy pinelands and sandhills, particularly in longleaf pine type; 0-300 m; Ala., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex., Va.; West Indies. Of all North American species of Rhynchospora, R. grayi appears best adapted to the xeric conditions found in the coarser sands of the longleaf pine-scrub oak-dominated yellow sandhills. Interestingly, it seems seldom to mix with its closest relative, R. megalocarpa, which is more often found in white sandhills. Vascular plants of NE US and adjacent Canada Cespitose, 3-8 dm; lvs flat, 2-3 mm wide; infl of 1-3 terminal and subterminal, hemispheric to subglobose glomerules, with 1-3 remote, slenderly peduncled lateral glomerules; spikelets lanceolate to narrowly ovoid, 4-6 mm, with 2-3 fls and 1 fr; bristles 6, antrorsely barbellate, shorter to longer than the achene; achenes olivaceous to nearly black, broadly elliptic to rotund, much thickened distally, 2.1-2.6 mm, nearly or quite as wide, finely marked with numerous pits; tubercle conic, not flattened, 0.3-0.8 mm. Wet sandy soil on the coastal plain; se. Va. to Fla., Tex., and Cuba. Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp. ©The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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