Eleocharis quinqueflora

Fewflower spikerush

Family: Cyperaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Fewflower spikerush is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Sacramento Valley, southern Coast Ranges, San Bernardino Mountains, San Jacinto Mountains, and Great Basin in wet meadows, fens, seeps, and shores at elevations of 40 to 3,600 meters. Flowering from spring to summer, this plant produces small spikelets 4 to 8 millimeters long with 3 to 8 flower bracts. Growing in small mats with thin cylindric stems 5 to 30 centimeters tall, it forms distinctive stem-tufts with a swollen base that often includes small bulbs. Its leaves have firm, persistent sheaths with truncate to acute tips, emerging from a weak rhizome. The fruit is a small, 3-sided structure 1.3 to 2.3 millimeters long, often with a beak-like tip and occasionally accompanied by 3 to 6 vestigial perianth bristles.

Habitat: Uncommon, local. Wet meadows, fens, seeps, shores

Bloom period: Spring-summer

Elevation: 40-3600 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoRI, CaR, SN, ScV, SCoRO, SnBr, SnJt, GB

California counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Inyo, Nevada, Tulare, Mono, Butte, Fresno, Lassen, Modoc, Monterey, Plumas, Riverside, Sierra, Yuba, Siskiyou, Tehama, Shasta, Tuolumne, Placer, Sonoma, Madera, El Dorado, Lake, Calaveras, Trinity, Mariposa, Humboldt, San Diego, Alpine

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