Isolepis hystrix
Awned Club-rushDwarf tufted annual. Culms filiform, to 5 cm high but often less than 1 cm high. Leaf-blades as long as or exceeding inflorescence. Spikelets 1–3, squarrose, to 5 mm long; involucral bract usually spreading, exceeding inflorescence, to 2 cm long; glumes very flattened, with awn about as long as body of glume and strongly excurved, with sides conspicuously 2- or 3-nerved, hyaline to straw-coloured, often red-tinged, 2.5–3.3 mm long (including awn); stamens 2. Style 3-fid. Nut equally trigonous, narrow-obovoid to ellipsoid, minutely reticulate (cell outlines slightly transversely elongate), dull, grey to black, c. one-third as long as glume body, 0.6–0.7 mm long, c. 0.5 mm diam Flowers spring.
LoM, Wim, GleP, VVP, VRiv, GipP, OtP, WaP, Gold, CVU, GGr, DunT, NIS, HSF, HNF. Also naturalised in WA, SA, NSW, Tas. Native to southern Africa. Widespread and locally abundant in areas prone to seasonal inundation chiefly in the west of the State, typically occurring within mixed populations of short-lived annual species.
The species appears to have increased its range dramatically in recent years.
Wilson, K.L. (1994). Cyperaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 2, Ferns and Allied Plants, Conifers and Monocotyledons, pp. 238–356. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
