Slender Fruit Nut Rush

The illegitimate name Scleria gracilis Elliott has been used for S. georgiana.

Plants perennial; rhizomes horizontal, nodulose. Culms sometimes in tufts, erect, slender, 30–50 cm, wiry, glabrous, trigonous, base somewhat swollen, brown. Leaves: sheaths purplish, wingless, weakly ribbed, glabrous or minutely hirsute; contra-ligules absent; blades linear or filiform, shorter than culms, resembling them, strongly keeled, 1–2 mm wide, glabrous or slightly scabrous on margins. Inflorescences terminal, 0.4–1 cm; fascicles 1, 4–10 mm wide, each with 1–5(–8) spikelets; bracts subtending inflorescence awl-shaped, 1–9(–11) cm, glabrous, appearing to be continuation of culm. Spikelets bisexual and staminate, 4–6(–7) mm; staminate scales lanceolate, membranous, pistillate scales ovate-lanceolate, acuminate. Achenes dull white or often light to dark gray, trigonous, ovoid, usually ribbed with 3 ridges extending from base along angles to apex, 2–3 mm, glabrous, base trigonous, pointed, 6-porose with 2 yellowish, granulose pits on each somewhat concave side, apex mucronate; hypogynium obsolete, reduced to minute brownish ring distal to pointed base.

Ala., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex.; West Indies (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica); Central America (Belize, Nicaragua).

Fruiting spring–summer.

Wet, sandy, peaty soils in pinelands and savannas or moist, sandy waste areas, shallow standing water; 0–100m.

Scleria gracilis Elliott, Sketch Bot. S. Carolina 2: 557. 1824, not Richard 1792