Description :

• Small, tufted, perennial, marsh herbs
• Leaves radical, numerous, grass-like, often with a latticed tissue-pattern below
• Capitula usually white-hairy, rarely glabrous, borne on ± erect scapes surrounded by a closed sheath below, longer than leaves
• Male flowers : sepals 2 or 3, variously connate, ciliate, bearded or glabrous at apex; petals 2 or 3, free, sometimes rudimentary or 0, inserted on raised flower axis, usually with apical gland, often hairy on inner face, ciliate or bearded above; stamens 4 or 6
• Female flowers : sepals and petals usually free; staminodes 0; ovary 2- or 3-locular; style branches 2 or 3, simple, without appendages
• Capsule 2- or 3-locular
• Seeds ellipsoid or globose
• x = 8, 10 (6) (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Eriocaulon L.
  • Linnaeus: 87 (1753)
  • Brown: 51 (1897)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: P159:1 (1967) [only one spenies]
  • Dahlgren et al.: 395 (1985)
  • Obermeyer: 9 (1985)
  • Cook: 87 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 250-400, tropical and subtropical
• Southern Africa : Species 12, widespread, excluding Western Cape; on river banks, in seepage areas and in the shallow waters of lakes and pools