Scleria gaertneri
Common Name: cortadera blanca
Family: Cyperaceae
Common Synonyms: Scleria melaleuca, Scleria pterota var. melaleuca
USDA Hardiness Zone: NA
Growth Habit: Graminoid
Origin: Central and South America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa
FISC Category: -
FDACS Listed Noxious Weed: No
Introduction Date: Earliest Florida specimen vouchered in 2010
IFAS Assessment:
Robust perennial 0.3–1.2 cm tall, with a shortly creeping rhizome 3–4 mm wide with very short internodes obscured by the swollen stem bases. Stems 2.5–3 mm wide, sometimes slightly scabrid above on the angles. Leaves shorter or longer than the stems, 5–11 mm wide, scabrid on the margins and veins. Sheaths glabrous to sparsely hairy, the basal ones ± without blades; ligule reddish hairy up to 6 mm long. Inflorescence of terminal and lateral panicles, the latter 2–3 single at the nodes, 2–7 cm long, 1–2 cm wide on peduncles scarcely or very shortly exserted from the leaf sheaths; male spikelets 4–4.8 mm long; female glumes pale, usually with reddish streaks or completely reddish or blackish red above, ovate, 3.5–5 mm long with greenish sometimes produced midrib, acuminate. Nutlets white with reddish or bluish black apex, globose or ovoid-globose, sometimes obscurely trigonous, 2.2–2.5 mm long, 2–2.2 mm wide, smooth and shining, glabrous above, with small or very small tufts of fine whitish hairs below; hypogynium 3-lobed, the lobes ovate or rounded, 1 mm long.
Wet, muddy, open and semi open areas, streambeds
NA
NA
Cyperaceae, K Hoenselaar, B. Verdcourt & H. Beentje. Hypolytrum, D Simpson. Fuirena, M Muasya. Flora of Tropical East Africa. 2010
Institute for Regional Conservation. 2020. Plants of the island of Puerto Rico. https://www.regionalconservation.org/ircs/database/plants/PlantPagePR.asp?TXCODE=Sclegaer Accessed on April 14, 2022.
Wunderlin, R. P., B. F. Hansen, A. R. Franck, and F. B. Essig. 2022. Atlas of Florida Plants (http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/). [S. M. Landry and K. N. Campbell (application development), USF Water Institute.] Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida, Tampa. A
"Franck, Alan R., et al. ""ADDITIONS TO THE FLORA OF FLORIDA, U.S.A. (2010–2015)."" Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, vol. 10, no. 1, 2016, pp. 175–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44858842. Accessed 27 Jul. 2022."
