Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Dichromena colorata (L.) Hitchcock
- Family: Sedge (Cyperaceae)
- Flowering: June-September
- Field Marks: This species is readily recognized by the white bracts that subtend the spikelets. The leaves are only about 1/8 inch wide.
- Habitat: Wet ditches, sand flats, savannas, pine flatwoods, bogs, moist glades.
- Habit: Perennial herb with slender, elongated, straw-colored rhizomes.
- Stems: Upright, slender, smooth, sharply triangular, up to 1 3/4 feet tall, longer than the leaves.
- Leaves: Elongated, narrow, up to 1/8 inch wide, shorter than the flowering stem, smooth except for the slightly rough edges.
- Flowers: Borne in spikelets at the tip of the stem, the cluster of spikelets subtended by 4-6 linear to lanceolate bracts conspicuously whitened and long-pointed at the tip.
- Spikelets: Many, crowded, many-flowered, white, ovoid to lanceoloid, up to 1/3 inch long, about 1/8 inch wide, the lower bearing only pistils, the upper bearing only stamens; scales flat, white except for the brownish base.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior; style 2-cleft.
- Fruits: Achenes brown or yellow, obovoid, up to 1/12 inch long, minutely warty or wrinkled, flattened, with a terminal tubercle as wide as the achene.
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