Description :

• Annuals or perennials, tufted or long-rhizomatous
• Culms with basal nodes
• Leaves mainly basal, sometimes cauline, ligulate or eligulate; sheath with adaxial apex truncate or n-shaped; blade linear, sometimes short, with or without keeled midrib, profile V-shaped, occasionally crescentiform
• Inflorescence sometimes pseudolateral, mostly anthelate, sometimes capitate or paniculate
• Spikelets of many distichous glumes, 2 lowest glumes empty, upper several to many bisexual, fertile, uppermost with male florets or empty; rachilla persistent, wingless
• Perianth 0
• Stamens 2 or 3
• Style slender, 2-branched
• Nutlet oblong or ellipsoid, laterally compressed (i.e. with edge of nutlet facing rachilla), smooth, papillose or rugose
• x = 10 (12) (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pycreus P.Beauv.
  • Beauvois: 48 (1816)
  • Clarke: 155 (1897)
  • Clarke: 288 (1901)
  • Schonland: 21 (1922)
  • Podlech: 38 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 105 (1972)
  • Compton: 64 (1976)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 44 (1984)
  • Forbes: 55 (1987)
  • Gordon-Gray: 137 (1995)
• Cyperus L. subgen. Pycreus (P.Beauv.) A.Gray
  • Kükenthal: 326 (1936)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 70, ± cosmopolitan in warm moist areas
• Southern Africa : Species ± 15, widespread, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape