Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Murdannia keisak (Hassk.) Hand. -Mazz.
- Family: Spiderwort (Commelinaceae)
- Flowering: September-October
- Field Marks: This creeping annual has 3 pinkish petals alternating with 3 green sepals, 2 or 3 fertile stamens, 3 or 4 sterile stamens, and tubular leaf sheaths.
- Habitat: Marshes, shores, edges of swamps, ditches, canals, stream banks, sometimes in shallow water.
- Habit: Creeping annual herb, rooting at the nodes, often forming dense mats.
- Stems: Creeping, the tips usually ascending, sparsely glandular-hairy.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, linear to narrowly ovate, pointed at the tip, usually clasping the stem at its base, up to 2 1/2 inches long, up to 1/2 inch wide, toothless, smooth; leaf sheaths tubular.
- Flowers: Solitary or 2-4 in axillary racemes; flower stalks up to 2 1/2 inches long.
- Sepals: 3, green, free from each other, ovate to oblong, up to 1/3 inch long, hairy on the outer surface.
- Petals: 3, pink, free from each other, up to 2/5 inch long, a little longer than the sepals.
- Stamens: 6, 2 or 3 fertile, the others sterile and not producing pollen.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Fruits: Capsules ellipsoid to oval, pointed at the tip, smooth, up to 1/2 inch long; seeds ovate to oblong, gray, flat, up to 1/6 inch long.
- Notes: This species has sometimes been known as Aneilema keisak. It is a native of eastern Asia.
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