Eriophorum gracile
Right: Slender Cotton Grass ( Eriophorum gracile )
The Slender Cotton Grass ( Eriophorum gracile ) belongs to the family of the Sedge family ( Cyperaceae ). It is a kind of nutrient-poor bogs and bog forests. It is very rare with only scattered occurrences in Europe and North America. The plant is also known as Petite cotton grass.
Features
The slender cotton grass is a perennial, herbaceous plant, which reaches stature heights of 10 to 70 centimeters. This Geophyt lockerrasig grows and forms up to 15 centimeters long underground runners. The stems grow upright to slightly bent over ( with maturity often nodding ). The base of the stem is round, blunt-topped triangular, smooth and slender. The basal leaf sheaths are brown, sometimes slightly reddish, dull, sharp triangular lattice and annoying. The leaf blades are linear, the lower flat and the upper almost from the bottom on three edges. The lower leaves are shorter than half the stem length, and less than four millimeters wide. The upper leaves ( about half of the stem ) reach three to five inches long and less than two millimeters wide. The ligule ( ligule ) are smaller than a millimeter, round, wider than long; the top sheet has no ligule.
The inflorescence is not dominated by the deciduous leaf -like bracts. The inflorescence consists of two to four seated until stalked, often nearly erect spikelets. These are five to ten millimeters long and twelve to dreißigblütig. The ear stems are rough with dense short hairs. The husks are dull, yellow to reddish brown and hautrandig. In contrast to, for example, the narrow-leaved cotton grass ( Eriophorum angustifolium) or broadleaf cotton grass ( Eriophorum latifolium ) are the husks much annoying. The Hüllfäden the perianth ( perianth ) are fewer in number than, say, at parting Cotton Grass ( Eriophorum vaginatum ) and reach an inch in length. Her long Blütenhüllfäden remain after maturity at the base of the caryopsis ( a special type of nut fruit ) and form a flight and swimming apparatus for improving the dissemination of seeds in the air and in the water. The fruit is a truncated triangular, smooth and about two to three millimeters long. The slender cotton grass flowers from May to June.
Ecology
The Slender Cotton Grass is wind-pollinated ( anemophily ). The shipment of seeds carried by the wind ( Anemochorie ). It is an evergreen Geophyt and hydrophyte. It overwinters with underground or submerged rhizomes, from which it shoots in spring. It is a half - light to full light plant. His focus is on ecological often soaked up flooded, low-nitrogen to nitrogen poorest, acidic to moderately acidic soils. It is not salt ertragend.
Distribution and location
The Slender Cotton Grass has scattered throughout Europe occurrence and goes north to the south of England and in Scandinavia, the Baltics and Eastern Europe to 69 ° north latitude. Southward its range extends to the Pyrenees, the Alps, isolated in the Northern Apennines and the Balkans to Bulgaria. In Europe, it lacks only a large scale in the Mediterranean and the level of Hungary. In addition, the plant is native to North America. It comes from the lowlands at altitudes up to about 1740 meters sea level ( Bavaria ), 1220 m NN ( Switzerland ) ( planar- colline to montane ) ago.
The slender cotton grass occurs on lime-poor part, weakly acidic but moderately calcareous, peaty soils in last ate sour and base intermediate bogs, on quaking, for example in rural Handtorfstichen, and silted mesophilic bog waters.
Its total area is given as ten million to one and a half billion km ².
Socialization
The Slender Cotton Grass is a characteristic species of different plant communities of small harrows Riede. It is part of the thread harrows Moore ( Caricetum lasiocarpae ) and also comes in wire harrows bogs ( Caricetum diandrae ) ago. The moss layer is dominated by peat mosses or the group of Amblystegiaceae (brown mosses). As Glazialrelikt it is very rare in rain bogs.
Threats and conservation
The Slender Cotton Grass is valid throughout Europe as endangered but is not separately protected worldwide. As a hazard cause eutrophication of soils is indicated by emissions. In Germany, the species is classified as critically endangered ( conservation status 1), but is not specifically protected under the BArtSchV. Your area proportion in Germany is ten percent. The stocks are in decline.
It is in Switzerland as endangered ( endangered ) with moderately to severely diminishing stocks.