Round-headed club-rush
Scirpoides holoschoenus
Family · Cyperaceae · Harmless
The rush of margins and ditches, in stiff tussocks of green cylindrical stems, with brown balls the size of peas clustered to one side just below the tip. It grows where water is near, even when unseen.
Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture · Dunes and sand · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asclustered club-rush
How to tell it
Fifty centimetres to a metre and a half. The stems are cylindrical, smooth and stiff, dull green, ending in a fine point that looks like a continuation of the stem. The flowers gather in brown spherical heads half a centimetre across, clustered to one side rather than at the top. The leaves are reduced to sheaths at the base.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
It was the raw material of mats, chair seats and rough ropes, hence the name. It is still planted to hold banks together. No food use.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.