Typha orientalis

Detailed description

Stout summer green, rhizomatous, colonial, usually emergent perennial herb up to 3 m tall. Rhizome to 40 mm diameter, fleshy, covered in numerous scale leaves, usually submerged in water or mud. Leaf-sheath often > 300 mm long; 1-3 m long, 10-30 mm diameter, dull green to grey-green, lamina linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, more or less plano-convex at base, pith spongy. Peduncle usually < leaves, up to 15 mm diameter. Inflorescence 300-500 mm long, the female part up to 25 mm diameter, the male portion narrower, and either continuous with or more or less separated from the female. Bracteoles in male portion more numerous than stamens, more or less equal to anthers, proximally narrow-linear, broader at tip and there variously laciniate, arising directly on axis and remaining more or less curled up after flowers fall. Male flower sessile to subsessile filaments at first shorter than anther-width, elongating later; anthers 1-3, tipped with blunt extension of connective; pollen clear yellow, grains single. Bracteoles in female part very few, absent from many flowers, more or less equal to gynophore hairs, filiform except for a few-celled expansion at apex. Female flowers much smaller than male, several grouped on proximal part of a short compound pedicel. Ovary at flower almost sessile, narrow-elliptic; style long, slender; stigma broader, spathulate, more or less concave; gynophore hairs extremely numerous, barely reaching base of stigma, stiff, filiform, very narrowly clavate at apex. Gynophore elongating at fruit 1-2 times style-length, hairs becoming confined to proximal third of gynophore and in groups or more or less whorled; persistent stigmas brown. Carpodia oblong-obovate, apices just projecting between the hairs. Seed 1.2 mm long, cuneate at base, truncate at apex, yellow.