Eriocaulon elegantulum Engl.

Slender tufted annual.. Leaves linear, 2–7.5 cm. long, 1.5–6 mm. wide, thin, acute or less often acuminate.. Scapes varying from few to ± 50, often slightly flexuous, 7–25 cm. high, 4-ribbed, the ribs forming narrow wings; sheaths ± as long as the leaves, the limb with a delicate hyaline acute tip, soon splitting.. Capitulum globose, 3–5 mm. diameter, greyish white, the pale female petals showing among the white-hairy floral bracts; involucral bracts shorter than the capitulum width, 4–5 spaced in one circlet (best seen in very young, still hemispherical capitula), ovate-oblong,obtuse, thin and hyaline, crumpled and obscured by the expanding flowers and apparently absent at maturity; floral bracts narrowly oblong-cuneate, black, scarious, concave but not keeled, densely white-pilose on the upper blade, acute; receptacle pilose, often thinly.. Flowers 3-merous, 1.0–1.2 mm. long, mainly female.. Male flowers: calyx spathate, black, the free sepal-tips obtuse, white-pilose; petals small and included within the calyx, white-pilose, glands very small; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals black, narrowly oblong, one slightly to definitely smaller, concave, lightly keeled and narrowly winged above the middle, white-hairy towards the acute tip; petals and ovary subsessile; petals narrowly oblanceolate-oblong, subequal, pallid, white-hairy around the tips, glands small, often absent on the median petal.. Seeds broadly ellipsoid, 0.3 mm. long, yellowish brown, translucent, white-reticulate.. Fig. 4/4.