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

Eleocharis gracilis

Eleocharis gracilis
Photo: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0

Eleocharis gracilis, the slender spike rush, is a slender perennial sedge-like plant from south-eastern Australia and New Zealand, growing 20 to 50 cm tall in small clumps in seasonally moist ground. It suits damp, boggy or pond-edge spots rather than dry garden beds.

Family
Cyperaceae (Cyper family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep the roots consistently moist and let it sit in shallow, seasonally wet ground.
Soil
Moist, fertile loam or wet mud; tolerates waterlogged conditions.
Temperature
10–30 °C; tolerates cool temperate and subtropical conditions, sensitive to hard frost.
How easy
Easy
Native range
E. & S. Australia, New Zealand
Climate
subtropical

About

Eleocharis gracilis the slender spike rush is a slender rush type plant growing from 20 to 50 cm (7.9 to 19.7 in) tall, rarely up to one metre (3 ft 3 in) tall. Found in small clumps, growing in seasonally moist situations in many parts of south eastern Australia and New Zealand. The specific epithet gracilis is from Latin, and refers to a slender appearance. This is one of the many plants first published by Robert Brown with the type known as "(J.) v.v." (meaning "I have seen it living at Port Jackson") appearing in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen in 1810.

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 gracilis 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…