Description:

• Mainly perennials, tufted, long-stoloniferous, or long-rhizomatous, sometimes producing corms or tubers, sometimes strong-smelling when dry (fenugreek odour - Goetghebeur 1986)
• Culms with basal nodes, rounded, 3-angled or flattened
• Leaves mostly basal, ligulate or eligulate; sheath occasionally persistent, swollen, forming 'bulb', adaxial apex truncate, V- or U-shaped; blade linear, short or 0, with keeled midrib, profile V-shaped, flanged V-shaped or crescentiform
• Inflorescence sometimes pseudolateral, a single spikelet, or capitate, or simply or compoundly anthelate, sometimes proliferous; subtending bracts foliose or scale-like
• Spikelets of several to many distichous glumes, 2 lowest empty, upper several to many with bisexual, fertile florets, uppermost with male floret or empty; glumes and nuts falling in age succession with rachilla persistent, or entire spikelet with rachilla caducous, disarticulating from a cushion below lowest fertile floret
• Perianth 0
• Stamens 1-3
• Style slender, 2- or 3-branched, rarely simple or 2- or 3-fid
• Nutlet oblong to obovate, biconvex with rounded side facing rachilla, or 3-angled, smooth or papillate
• x = 5, 8 (6, 7, 9, 13) (high aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• This genus is sometimes treated in a broad sense, to include Alinula, Courtoisina, Kyllinga and Pycreus, see e.g. Kükenthal (1935); Haines & Lye: 389 (1983)
• Mariscus may also be treated as a separate genus, see e.g. Podlech (1967); Vorster: (1978)
• Cyperus includes the 'world's worst weed', C. rotundus L. (Holm et al.: 609 (1977))

Nomenclature:

• Cyperus L.
  • Linnaeus: 74 (1753)
  • Thunberg: 18 (1794)
  • Schrader: 4 (1832)
  • Clarke: 162 (1897)
  • Clarke: 310 (1901)
  • Schonland: 24 (1922)
  • Kükenthal: 42 (1935) in broad sense
  • Levyns: 98 (1950) in broad sense
  • Podlech: 7 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 103 (1972)
  • Compton: 60 (1976)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 39 (1984)
  • Forbes: 50 (1987)
  • Gordon-Gray: 45 (1995)
• Juncellus C.B.Clarke
  • Clarke: 594 (1893)
  • Clarke: 161 (1897)
  • Clarke: 306 (1901)
  • Schonland: 23 (1922)
  • Podlech: 28 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 105 (1972)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 43 (1984)
  • Forbes: 39 (1987)
• Cyperus L. subgen. Juncellus C.B.Clarke
  • Clarke: 33 (1897)
  • Kükenthal: 315 (1936)
• Mariscus Vahl
  • Vahl: 372 (1805) name conserved
  • Thunberg: 18 (1794)
  • Schrader: 12 (1832)
  • Clarke: 185 (1897)
  • Clarke: 377 (1901)
  • Schonland: 29 (1922)
  • Podlech: 31 (1967)
  • Gordon-Gray: 105 (1972)
  • Compton: 66 (1976)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 44 (1984)
  • Forbes: 53 (1987)
  • Gordon-Gray: 123 (1995)
• Cyperus L. subgen. Mariscus (Vahl) C.B.Clarke
  • Clarke: 34 (1884)
  • Kükenthal: 402 (1936)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 550, ± cosmopolitan
  • Cyperus papyrus L. was used for paper-making in the Nile Valley until ± 8 A.D. (Mabberley 1997)
• Southern Africa: Species over 80, widespread, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape