Flora of New Zealand Series

Tufted annual. Stems to 40 cm high, very slender in small plants but more rigid in larger ones, 3-angled, very leafy at base. Leaves < stems, to 2.5 mm wide, margins smooth except near tip. Involucral bracts 2-3, very widely spreading, unequal, at least the lowest >, to very much > inflorescence. Inflorescence a single head or small umbel with few very short rays. Spikelets in ovoid dark clusters, oblong or oblong-lanceolate, 4-8 × 2 mm, much compressed. Glumes not closely imbricate, ± 2 mm long, ovate, obtuse, with broad green keel and dark red-purple patch at tip and purple band inside the green margin. Stamens 3 or 2. Style-branches 2. Nut ± ½ length of glume, orbicular-obovoid, biconvex, black.

N. North Auckland - Waihopai Stream, Lake Omapere, Waipoua, lake near Muriwai Beach. (N. Africa, Asia, Australia)

First record: Mason, Moar and Cooper 1950: 87.

First collection: "Waipoua State Forest, rough swampy pasture", K. W. Allison No. 104, March 1944 (CHR 82616).

C. sanguinolentus, with its dark red-purple to ± black inflorescences, superficially resembles forms of Schoenus apogon but differs in the 3-angled stems and flattened spikelets. Easily distinguished from other Cyperus spp. by the dark red-purple marginal bands of the glumes.

A weedy grassy plant of wet waste places, about lake and swamp margins, and in wet pastures.