Eleocharis coloradoensis

Dwarf spikerush

Family: Cyperaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Dwarf spikerush is a California native perennial found in the Central Valley, southern Coast Ranges, southern Coast, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, Mojave Desert, and Sonoran Desert in fresh to brackish wet soils at elevations below 1,500 meters. Flowering from spring to fall, this tiny plant produces small, delicate spikelets 3 to 6 millimeters long with pale flowers. Growing as a diminutive herb just 2 to 9 centimeters tall with thin cylindrical stems less than 0.5 millimeters in diameter, it spreads via a weak rhizome that often develops a small spherical tuber at its tip. Its leaf sheaths are particularly delicate, frequently disintegrating and ending in rounded tips, with the plant typically developing between 6 to 25 flower bracts. The fruit is fine-roughened, small and three-sided, often with vestigial perianth bristles barely half the length of the fruit itself.

Habitat: Very local. Fresh to brackish bare wet soil, inland

Bloom period: Spring-fall

Elevation: < 1500 m

Bioregions: CaRH, GV, SCoRO, s SCo, TR, PR, MP, DSon

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.