Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Eriocaulon decangulare L.
- Family: Pipewort (Eriocaulaceae)
- Flowering: June-October
- Field Marks: Pipeworts are recognized by their single white or gray heads of flowers and their leafless stems. This species has hard, hairy heads of flowers and its bracts longer than its flowers.
- Habitat: Low pinelands, wet prairies, flatwoods, bogs, wet ditches, stream banks, along shores, sometimes in water as much as 3 feet deep.
- Habit: Perennial herb with stout, much-branched rhizomes, forming clumps.
- Stems: Upright, twisted, with 8-12 vertical ridges, up to 44 inches tall, bearing no leaves and a single head of flowers.
- Leaves: All basal, elongated, very narrow, drawn out into a long point, up to 15 inches long, up to 1/3 inch wide, smooth.
- Flowers: Many crowded into a hard, white, nearly spherical head up to 3/4 inch in diameter; flowers subtended by hairy bracts longer than the flowers; male and female flowers separate but in the same head.
- Sepals: 2, linear, up to 1/6 inch long, yellowish white, bearing club-shaped hairs.
- Petals: 2, spatulate, united at the base, shorter than the sepals, hairy.
- Stamens: Usually 4.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, on a short stalk; styles 2-branched.
- Fruits: Capsules containing minute, oval seeds.
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