Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annual or short-lived perennial herbs, 4–27 cm tall.

Stems: Flowering stems very narrowly winged, with 1–2 internodes bearing cauline leaves or scapose with a solitary spathe at end of the branch.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Usually distichous, usually isobilateral and unifacial. Blades usually less than ½ as long as the flowering stems, 1–4 mm wide. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers several, spathes 12–35 mm long, outer spathe as long as to somewhat longer than the inner one. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Tepals yellow with reddish brown (sometimes described as magenta) eye–ring, 5–7 mm long. Staminal column urceolate, 1 mm or less; filaments distinct for less than 0.5 mm; anthers ca. 1 mm long. Ovary inferior, 3-carpellate, 3-celled, globose, up to 1 mm in diameter.

Fruit: Capsules globose; 2–5 mm in diameter; exserted 3–9 mm from spathes. Seeds blackish; ovoid to somewhat flattened on sides; ca. 1 mm in diameter; with a circular pit about ½ diameter of seed.

Ploidy: 2n = 32

Habitat: Naturalized in pastures.

Elevation Range: ca. 820 m.