''Schoenoplectus lacustris'', the lakeshore bulrush or common club-rush, is a species of club-rush (genus ''

Schoenoplectus ''Schoenoplectus'' (club-rush ld World species bulrush or tule ew World species is a genus of plants in the sedges with a cosmopolitan distribution. Note that the name bulrush is also applied to species in the unrelated genus ''Typha'' as well ...

'') that grows in fresh water across Europe and some neighbouring areas.

Description

''Schoenoplectus lacustris'' grows up to tall, with stems thick. Most of the leaves of ''S. lacustris'' are reduced to bladeless sheaths around the stem, but leaf blades up to long can be formed under water. The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

appears at the top of the stem, and comprises 3–10 branches, each of which is up to long and may be again divided into shorter branches. The

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

s are in the form of

spikelet A spikelet, in botany, describes the typical arrangement of the flowers of grasses, sedges and some other Monocots. Each spikelet has one or more florets. The spikelets are further grouped into panicles or spikes. The part of the spikelet that ...

s, each of which is long by wide. The stems of ''S. lacustris'' are round in cross-section, in contrast to the triquetrous (rounded-triangular) stems of other species in the genus, such as '' S. triqueter'' and '' S. pungens''. The stems of '' S. tabernaemontani'' are also round, but ''S. tabernaemontani'' is a smaller plant, less than tall, with only two stigmas per flower.

Distribution

''Schoenoplectus lacustris'' is widespread in Europe, albeit rare in the far north, and extends eastwards into Asia as far as

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

. It is also found in a number of Mediterranean sites in North Africa, and has been introduced to Haiti.

Taxonomy

The species was first described by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

as "''Scirpus lacustris''" in his 1753 '. It became part of the genus ''

'' when

Eduard Palla Eduard Palla (3 September 1864 – 7 March 1922) was an Austrian botanist and mycologist of Moravian descent. As a botanist he specialized in research of Cyperaceae (sedges), of which he was the taxonomic authority of many species. From 1883 ...

raised this from the rank of subgenus to the rank of genus in 1888. Two subspecies are recognised; the autonymic subspecies (''S. lacustris'' subsp. ''lacustris'') is found throughout the range of the species, and a second, ''S. lacustris'' subsp. ''hippolyti'' is restricted to an area reaching from the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...

to the mountains of Central Asia.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q158956 lacustris Plants described in 1753 Flora of Europe Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Taxa named by Eduard Palla