Greek isos – equal, lepis – scale, referring to the similar looking spikelet glumes.
Slender annual or perennial tufted or rhizomatous herbs, sometimes aquatic or floating. Stems without nodes. Leaves basal and often reduced to sheaths. Involucral bracts 0-2, longer than the inflorescence, the lowest erect and leafy, often soon shed. Inflorescence a head of spikelets with numerous flowers. Fruit a 3-angled or lens-shaped nut.
Occasionally grown for the ornamental forms.
Seed or division.
Grass-like plants, the leaves without rough margins as occurs in Ficinia; absence of perianth segments has been used to segregate the genus from Scirpus.
About 70 species, cosmopolitan, with centres of distribution in Australia (29 species) and Africa.
Muasya et al. (2002).
Source: (2005). Cyperaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 5. Flowering plants. Monocotyledons. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.