e-Key v3 - Coleochloa
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Cyperaceae - Caricoideae - Trilepideae - Coleochloa Gilly

Description :

  • Perennials, tufted
  • Culms rounded to compressed below, with aerial nodes
  • Leaves basal and cauline, ligulate, distichous, deciduous, slender; sheaths split or tubular (cauline leaves), apex V-shaped; blade setaceous, without keeled midrib; profile V-shaped or crescentiform
  • Inflorescence paniculate
  • Spikelets of several, obscurely distichous glumes, mostly bearing florets of both sexes separately; lowest 1 or 2 glumes empty, next with female floret and uppermost 1 or 2 with male florets or empty
  • Perianth of 3 plumose scales
  • Stamens (1)3
  • Style linear, 3-angled and broadened into a hollow beak (formed by separation of pericarp) on ovary, 3-branched
  • Nutlet pale, green or brown, ovoid, triangular, beaked

Nomenclature:

  • Coleochloa Gilly
    • Gilly: 12 (1943)
    • Nelmes: 374 (1954)
    • Compton: 73 (1976)
    • Forbes: 39 (1987)
  • Eriospora Hochst. ex A.Rich.
    • Richard: 508 (1851) not of Berk. & Broome
    • Clarke: 297 (1898)
    • Clarke: 511 (1902)
    • Schonland: 65 (1922)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global : Species ± 7, Africa and Madagascar
  • Southern Africa : Species 2, occurring in Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland

References:

  • CLARKE, C.B. 1898. Cyperaceae . Flora capensis 7
  • CLARKE, C.B. 1902. Cyperaceae . Flora of tropical Africa 8
  • COMPTON, R.H. 1976. Cyperaceae . Flora of Swaziland. Journal of South African Botany Suppl. Vol. 11
  • FORBES, P.L. 1987. Cyperaceae . In T.K. Lowrey & S. Wright, The Flora of the Witwatersrand Vol. 1: The Monocotyledonae. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg
  • GILLY, C.L. 1943. An Afro-South American cyperaceous complex. Brittonia 5
  • NELMES, E. 1954. Notes on Cyperaceae . The African genus Coleochloa . Kew Bulletin 1953
  • RICHARD, A. 1851. Tentamen Florae Abyssinicae 2. A. Bertrand, Paris
  • SCHONLAND, S. 1922. Introduction to South African Cyperaceae . Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 3