Flora of the Hawaiian Islands
Monocotyledon Literature for Machaerina angustifolia
Wagner et al., 1990, 1999.
   Cyperaceae -- The Sedge Family Bibliography
      Machaerina angustifolia

Common name(s): `uki
General Information
DistributionKnown from New Guinea, the Society Islands, and Hawai`i.In the Hawaiian Islands, indigenous to Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui, Hawai`i.
















Click here for detailed USGS map by Jonathan Price
Habit
Perennials with short rhizomes; culms biconvex, (30-)50-130 cm tall, 4-8 mm wide, smooth.
Leaves
Leaves pale green, equitant, primarily basal or nearly so, and with a single leaf about midway up the culm, as long as to slightly longer than the culm, 6-23 mm wide, smooth, apex subacute; sheaths brown.
Flowers
Inflorescence a large decompound panicle 30-50 cm long, 8-16 cm wide, bearing 4-5 partial panicles, the panicle branches 2-13 together, exserted from the bract sheath, the longer ones up to 12 cm long, bracts shorter than the panicle, the sheath brown; spikelets congested in clusters of 2-4, each one turbinate in fruit, 7-8 mm long; glumes 5-8, dark brown, subcoriaceous, oblong-ovate, subobtuse, boat-shaped with a conspicuous keel, indistinctly many-nerved, the lower 2 glumes small and empty, the middle 3-6 glumes flower-bearing, 3-4 mm long, the distal 1-2 glumes much-reduced; perianth absent; stamens 3; style 3-cleft, the long style base pyramidal, pubescent.
Fruit
Achenes yellowish brown, narrowly ellipsoid, trigonous and slightly winged, 2.8-3.2 mm long (incl. stipe), the base attenuate to a 3-winged stipe ca. 1.5 mm long.
Chromosomes
2n = ca. 60*