Isoetes histrix

Isoetes histrix is a plant of the genus Brachsenkräuter ( Isoetes ) in the subfamily Brachsenkrautgewächse ( Isoetaceae ).

Features

Isoetes histrix is a perennial tuber Geophyt and reached its leaves plant height 5-15 (rarely 35) inches. Over the summer, the plant is leafless and retracted. The trunk is more or less bulbous and three-lobed. He is of lasting, blackish leaf bases covered, which usually have two long, stiff peaks and in between a brief spike, but occasionally only three short peaks. The 10 to 40 arranged in a rosette, erect to protruding leaves are shaped bins, 1 to 1.5 millimeters thick with a trapezoidal cross section to pentagonal, soft, light green and whitish at the base. The transparent, above the sporangia strongly narrowed skin edge is located at the base of the leaf 1-2 cm upwards away.

The sporangia are located at the base of rosette leaves in a pit. They are covered by a veil. Micro and Megasporophylle are designed equal. The spherical, 320-560 micron macrospores have clear edges and are densely covered with rounded cusps. The microspores are 26 to 29 microns long, elliptical and densely covered with short spines. The spore maturation period lasts from March to June.

Isoetes histrix is diploid with a chromosome number of 2n = 20 or 22

Occurrence

Isoetes histrix is a Mediterranean -Atlantic Florenelement. In the Mediterranean, the range of the species from the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb stretches east to west Anatolia. In Western Europe, where this quillwort occurs along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and France to the Channel Islands, the northernmost deposits are located in Cornwall.

The species grows on sandy or gravelly winter ate and locations, for example in irrigation ditches or drying ponds in Crete at altitudes 50-1050 meters.

Documents

• Ralf Jahn, Peter Schoenfelder: Excursion Flora of Crete. With contributions by Alfred Mayer and Martin Scheuerer. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-8001-3478-0, page 35