Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Canada spikesedge

Eleocharis geniculata

Also called Spike Rush, Capitate Spikerush, Canada Spikerush, Bent Spikerush, Geniculate Spikerush, Knee Spikerush

Canada spikesedge
Photo: 阿橋 HQ, CC BY-SA 2.0

Canada spikesedge is a small annual sedge that grows in wet, muddy ground such as pond edges, ditches and rice fields, rarely grown on purpose. The key to growing it is keeping the soil constantly moist to waterlogged.

Family
Cyperaceae (Cyper family)
Grows as
Annual
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep the soil wet or waterlogged at all times; it tolerates shallow standing water.
Soil
Moist, fertile mud or loam, such as wet garden soil or a boggy pot.
Temperature
18–35 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Easy
Native range
Tropics & Subtropics to N. America
Climate
subtropical or tropical

About

Eleocharis geniculata is a species of spikesedge known by several common names, including bent spikerush and Canada spikesedge. This is a widespread plant of wet areas in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, Madagascar, and some Pacific Islands. It is an annual spikesedge growing to a maximum height of about 40 centimeters. It has a few straw-colored leaves and many thin erect stems. The stems hold inflorescences of rounded spikelets each containing at least 10 tiny flowers. The flowers are covered with dark greenish-brown bracts. The fruit is a shiny purple-brown achene not more than a millimeter long.

Other Eleocharis plants

Needle spikerush · Sharp Spike Sedge · Purple spikerush · Glades spikerush · Bolander's spikerush · Eleocharis brassii · Eleocharis caespitosissima · Algal Bulrush · Drooping Spikerush · Eleocharis dietrichiana · Chinese water chestnut · Jointed spikesedge

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Eleocharis geniculata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…