Description:

• Annual or perennial rhizomatous herbs
• Leaves of two main types, either rosulate, tufted, grass-like soft; or 1-few per shoot on linear, horizontal rhizomes, hard, terete, rush-like, often septate or reduced to usually open basal sheaths
• Scape terete or trigonous, often naked; bracts and bracteoles present, glumaceous
• Flowers usually very many in much-branched, exserted panicles (anthelae), or contracted and congested, rarely reduced to a few flowers
• Perianth segments ovate or lanceolate, hard, brown or green, glumaceous
• Stamens: filaments filiform or trigonous
• Ovary with parietal placentas protruding to form 3 ± separate locules; ovules biseriate, many; style terete, long or short, with 3 stigmatic arms
• Capsule 3-valved, loculicidal
• Seeds many, small, occasionally tailed
• x = 10 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Juncus L.
  • Linnaeus: 325 (1753)
  • Brown: 16 (1897)
  • Adamson: 3 (1935)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1967)
  • Obermeyer: 73 (1985)
  • Cook: 108 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 250, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Species ± 2, widespread, mainly in mild to cold situations; in shallow water on the banks of streams, dams or lakes, in vleis, marshes or seepage areas