| Monocotyledon | Literature for Cyperus brevifolius
Kern, 1974; Wagner et al., 1990; Lorence & Wagner, 2019. |
| Cyperaceae -- The Sedge Family | Bibliography |
| Cyperus brevifolius | |
Common name(s): kaluha, kili`o`opu, kili`o`opu, manunene, mau`u mokae, mau`u mokae |
| General Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Widely spread in tropical and warm temperate regions throughout the world.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Hawai`i. First collected 1864- 1865, Mann & Brigham 23 (BISH). |
|
| Habitat | Disturbed areas such as gardens and lawns, roadsides, pastures, and along trails in mesic to wet forest | |
| Elevation | 20-1220 m |
|
| Habit |
Perennial herb, rhizomes slender;
culms tufted or closely to widely spaced
in a single row along the rhizome, slender, 7‒30 cm tall. |
|
| Leaves |
Leaves few, basal or nearly so; blade herbaceous, linear, shorter than or occasionally as long as the culm, 2‒3
mm wide; sheath brown or purplish brown, membranous. |
|
| Flowers |
Inflorescences a single terminal spike or sometimes 2‒3 together, pale green, ± becoming yellowish green at maturity, globose or broadly ovoid globose, 5‒10 mm long and as wide; involucral bracts 3, leaflike, unequal in length. Spikelets oblong-lanceolate, compressed, 3‒3.5 mm long, ca. 1 mm wide, jointed at base; glumes 4, pale green, membranous, the first one elliptic-lanceolate, the second ovate, and the third and fourth boatshaped, folded, the keel acute, sometimes with resinous spots, 7-veined including midrib, keel sparsely spinulose toward apex, apex mucronate, the mucro straight or slightly recurved; stamens 3, anthers linear, ca. 0.7 mm; style long, stigmas 2, less than ½ as long as style. |
|
| Fruit |
Achenes brown, obovoid-oblong, biconvex, ca. 1‒1.5 mm long, densely puncticulate. |
|
| Chromosomes |
2n = 18, 32, 120, 126. |
|
| Contributor |
David Lorence |