Description:

• Mostly annuals or slender perennials, occasionally wholly aquatic, usually tufted, sometimes long-stoloniferous, occasionally producing corms
• Culm with aerial or basal nodes, terete, frequently capillary
• Leaves basal or cauline, eligulate; sheath with adaxial apex truncate; blade 0 to well developed, linear or setaceous, without keeled midrib, profile crescentiform
• Inflorescence sometimes pseudolateral, a single spikelet or capitate, sometimes proliferous
• Spikelets 1-many; all glumes fertile, bisexual
• Perianth 0(6), when present, of bristles
• Stamens 1-3
• Ovary sessile or with short gynophore
• Style base frequently persistent, branches 2 or 3
• Nutlet linear, ovoid or obovate, biconvex or 3-angled, smooth, papillose, trabeculate or rugose
• x = 12, 13, 14 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Isolepis R.Br.
  • Brown: 221 (1810)
  • Schrader: 14 (1832)
  • Kunth: 187 (1837)
  • Raynal: 49 (1977)
  • Bond & Goldblatt: 43 (1984)
  • Gordon-Gray: 104 (1995)
• Eleogiton Link
  • link: 284 (1827)
• Scirpus L. subgen. Fluitanthes C.B.Clarke
  • Clarke: 213 (1898)
• Scirpus L. subgen. Isolepis C.B.Clarke in part
  • Clarke: 216 (1898)
  • Clarke: 759 (1900)
  • Clarke: 446 (1902)
• Scirpus L. in part
  • Schonland: 36 (1922)
  • Gordon-Gray: 109 (1972)
  • Compton: 70 (1976)
  • Forbes: 59 (1987)
• Ficinia Schrad. in part
  • Pfeiffer: 14 (1920)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 60, widely distributed in temperate and subtropical parts of the world
• Southern Africa: Species ± 30, concentrated in Western Cape, also in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Northern and Eastern Cape