''Carex acaulis'', known as the small dusky sedge, is a species of

sedge The Cyperaceae are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges. The family is large, with some 5,500 known species described in about 90 genera, the largest being the "true sedges" genus ''Carex'' wit ...

in the genus '' Carex'' native to the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...

and southern

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Description

''Carex acaulis'' has at least two flowering spikes; the terminal one contains staminate (male) flowers and is long, while the others contain pistillate (female) flowers, each of which is subtended by a scale and may produce a utricle up to long. ''Carex acaulis'' is very similar to the closely related species '' C. macrosolen'', and the

ranges In the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament, the word ranges has two very different meanings. Leviticus In Leviticus 11:35, ranges probably means a cooking furnace for two or more pots, as the Hebrew word here is in the dual number; or perhaps ...

of the two species overlap, but ''C. macrosolen'' has much longer utricles than ''C. acaulis'', at long.

Taxonomy and distribution

''Carex acaulis'' was first described by

Jules Dumont d'Urville Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (; 23 May 1790 – 8 May 1842) was a French explorer and naval officer who explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. As a botanist and cartographer, he gave his nam ...

in 1826. He based his description on

type material In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the ...

from near

Port Louis Port Louis (french: Port-Louis; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Polwi or , ) is the capital city of Mauritius. It is mainly located in the Port Louis District, with a small western part in the Black River District. Port Louis is the country's ec ...

on East Falkland Island. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

was deposited at the

Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

in Paris. The species has subsequently been reported from Patagonia and

Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla G ...

, although the Fuegian reports are considered suspect by the sedge expert Gerald Allen Wheeler; many of them actually refer to specimens of '' Carex sagei''.

Conservation and ecology

Like many other sedges, ''Carex acaulis'' is restricted to wet habitats, such as

bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...

s and lake margins. It is not included on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

, but it is rare in the Falkland Islands, and is listed nationally as a

vulnerable species A vulnerable species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being threatened species, threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatened species, ...

References

External links

* – includes images of the holotype {{Taxonbar, from=Q2938178

acaulis This list of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names is intended to help those unfamiliar with classical languages to understand and remember the scientific names of organisms. The binomial nomenclature used for animals and plants i ...

Flora of southern South America Flora of the Falkland Islands Plants described in 1825