Isolepis crassiuscula
Hook.f. Alpine Club-rushAquatic perennial, with culms leafy, submerged and elongated or creeping and rooting at nodes, or erect and tufted (in non-aquatic situations). Leaves sheathing, basal one on each branch usually an open sheath, to 10 mm long and to 5 mm wide, upper leaves with sheath closed but tearing readily along the ventral surface, blade linear, 3–12(–18) cm long, 0.5–1.5 mm wide, rather thick. Spikelet solitary, ovate to broad-elliptic in outline, slightly flattened, 12–40-flowered, 5–9 mm long; involucral bract shorter than to slightly exceeding spikelet, glume-like or with short thickened appendage; glumes obtuse, conspicuously numerous-nerved, whitish or straw-coloured, often with orange-brown to dark red-brown dots or patches, 3–4 mm long; stamens 2 or 3; anthers 0.8–1.5 mm long; style 2-fid. Nut plano-convex, with well-defined margins, obovoid to ellipsoid, smooth, minutely reticulate, shining, grey-brown, about half as long as glume, 1.5–2 mm long, 0.8–1.4 mm diam Flowers spring–summer.
DunT, EGU, HSF, HNF, MonT, HFE, VAlp. Also Qld, NSW, Tas. New Guinea, New Zealand, Japan. Almost ubiquitous through alpine and high subalpine creeks, pools and swamps.
Plants of Isolepis crassiuscula are coarser than those of I. producta and I. fluitans, with nerves on glumes more prominent than in those species. Occurs at higher altitudes than either of those species.
Wilson, K.L. (1994). Cyperaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 2, Ferns and Allied Plants, Conifers and Monocotyledons, pp. 238–356. Inkata Press, Melbourne.