Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Cyperus compressus L.
- Family: Sedge (Cyperaceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This sedge has flat, crowded spikelets not arranged in large, branched clusters. It differs from most other similar sedges because it is an annual.
- Habitat: Moist to wet sands in ditches, roadsides, fields, and disturbed sites.
- Habit: Tufted annual sedge with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Upright or ascending, up to 15 inches long, smooth.
- Leaves: Elongated and very slender, some of the leaves usually reaching or surpassing the inflorescence, not more than 1/10 inch wide, smooth.
- Flowers: Borne in several spikelets, most of them sessile at the tips of the stems, a few sometimes on longer stalks, all subtended by 2-5 leaf-like bracts.
- Spikelets: Many-flowered, linear to narrowly oblong, up to 1 inch long, with the tip of the scales pointed and somewhat spreading.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Fruits: Achenes obovoid, triangular, brown, less than 1/12 inch long.
Previous Species -- Cypress-knee Sedge (Carex decomposita)
Return to Species List -- Group 3
Next Species -- Sheathed Flatsedge (Cyperus haspan)
