Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennial or occasionally annual herbs occurring in wet habitats.

Stems: Herbaceous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, crowded toward base of plant, grass-like. Sheathing, basal sheath weakly differentiated. <b>Stipules</b> absent. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers numerous in often white to gray, dense, terminal heads subtended by an involucre of chaffy bracts; receptacle pubescent or with chaffy bracts. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious or sometimes dioecious), actinomorphic or irregular, minute, insect–pollinated or wind–pollinated. <b>Calyx</b> of 2–3 sepals, distinct, basally connate, or connate to form a spathelike scale. Corolla of 2–3, distinct or connate, with a nectary gland at the tip in Eriocaulon, or corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 2 or 4 in 2-merous flowers, (1)3 or 6 in 3-merous ones, opposite the petals when 2 or 3; filaments of staminate flowers adnate to corolla tube or with a slender androphore, the petals and Stamens diverging at its apex; anthers small, dithecal or sometimes monothecal, introrse, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 2–3-carpellate, with as many cells, often on a stipe, carpels pendulous; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous style terminal, 2–3-lobed, the lobes sometimes divided again.

Fruit: Loculicidal capsules. Seeds with mealy endosperm; embryo small; undifferentiated; forming a cap on the endosperm at the micropylar end of the seed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: