Lepironia articulata (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Lepironia articulata (Retz.) Domin

Protologue: Biblioth. Bot. 85: 486 (1915).

Family: Cyperaceae

Chromosome number: 2n= unknown

Synonyms

Restio articulatus Retz. (1786-1787), Lepironia mucronata L.C. Rich. (1805), L. compressa Boeckeler (1896).

Vernacular names

• Brunei: purun
• Indonesia: purun (Bangka), purun danau (Kalimantan), tekor (South Sumatra)
• Malaysia: purun, purun danau
• Thailand: kra chuut (central, Satun).

Origin and geographic distribution

L. articulata occurs discontinuously from Madagascar through Sri Lanka, China and South-East Asia (Thailand, Indo-China, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Bangka, Borneo, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, New Guinea) to Australia, the Caroline Islands, New Caledonia and Fiji. It is cultivated in Thailand, Sumatra, Borneo, India and China and sometimes escapes from cultivation can be found (e.g. in India).

Uses

The stems of L. articulata are made into mats, bags and baskets, e.g. in Indonesia, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea, and into window blind materials. In Borneo and South Sumatra strong and completely closed L. articulata mats have been used as packing material for tobacco, rubber, kapok, cotton, cane sugar and other products, for drying paddy and for the transport of food products such as rice, salt and dried fish. In China L. articulata is used to make mats and sails for junks. In Australia the still fleshy, thickened rhizomes are eaten by aboriginals.

Production and international trade

The main production area of L. articulata mats in Indonesia at the beginning of the 20th century was the hinterland of Banjarmasin (South Kalimantan), where about 1400 ha were planted. In the period 1918-1925 between 3.5 and 7 million L. articulata mats were shipped annually from this region to Java, Sumatra, northern Borneo and elsewhere, whereas local use was estimated at about 1.5 million mats per year. Production in South Sumatra was for local use only and was estimated at 40 000 mats and 300 000 "mat-bags" per year. No recent production or trade figures are available.

Properties

The stems of L. articulata are very good weaving material, but detailed information on their morphological, chemical and mechanical characteristics is lacking.

Description

A subaquatic, rush-like, leafless, rhizomatous, perennial herb, up to 2.5 m tall, often growing in large clumps. Rhizome creeping horizontally a few cm below the mud surface, up to about 15 cm × 0.5-1 cm, fleshy at first but becoming woody, many-noded, internodes about 1 cm long, dark brown, covered with brown, ovate-acute, striate scales and bearing numerous stout roots. Stems (culms) close together, arranged in one row along the rhizome, each one erect, slenderly cylindrical, 0.4-2.5 m × 2-8 mm, smooth and hollow but transversely septate (clearly visible when dried), glaucous or grey-green, clothed at the base with about 3 sheaths and 4-5 scales. Leaves reduced to bladeless sheaths, 3-30 cm long, upper one longest, split on one side, margins overlapping, brownish or reddish. Inflorescence consisting of a single spike-like cluster, apparently lateral owing to the single, erect, culm-like, involucral bract 2-6 cm long which extends the stem, gradually acute at apex; spike-like cluster ellipsoid, 1-4 cm × 0.5-1.5 cm, purplish-brown, many-flowered; rachis thick, spongious, conical, persistent, bearing spirally arranged, tightly and densely imbricated, red-brown glumes; glumes ovate to obovate-orbicular, 3-7 mm × 3-6 mm, coriaceous with cartilaginous margin, glabrous, caducous with the fruit, each subtending a bisexual flower cluster (cyme) except some empty lower ones; each cyme with a terminal pistillate flower and up to about 15 small, hyaline, hypogynous scales, each subtending a single staminate flower but the upper few often empty, the lowest pair opposite, folded, lanceolate, 4-6 mm × 0.5 mm, ciliolate on the keel, the remaining ones fascicled, linear-oblanceolate, 4-6 mm × 0.3 mm, acute, flat and glabrous; staminate flowers with only one stamen, anther linear, 2-3 mm long, shortly apiculate; pistillate flower consisting of a naked pistil, style continuous with the ovary and ending in 2 long stigmas, its slightly thickened base persistent in fruit as a short beak 0.5 mm long. Fruit a double achene-like, strongly flattened obovoid to subglobose nut, 3-4 mm × 2-3 mm, longitudinally striate, brown, glabrous but margins scaberulous at the top.

Growth and development

In the Tasek Bera swamp in Peninsular Malaysia it takes about 3 months for L. articulata culms to start flowering and 7 months to reach their maximum dry weight of about 3.5 g. Here, reed swamps dominated by L. articulata contain on average 30 clumps and 140 culms per m²with a standing biomass (including rhizomes) of up to 850 g dry weight per m². Up to 7 m rhizomes were found per m², at 5-7 cm below the mud surface.

Other botanical information

Within the subfamily Cyperoideae , Lepironia L.C. Rich. belongs to the tribe Hypolytreae , which also includes Mapania Aublet, Scirpodendron Zipp. ex Kurz and Thoracostachyum Kurz. Lepironia has often been considered a monotypic genus, with L. articulata being the only species, but at present Lepironia and Chorisandra R. Br. have been united into a larger genus Lepironia , with 1 species in subgenus Lepironia (characterized by an inflorescence consisting of one spike-like cluster and by a digynous pistil), and 4 species in subgenus Chorisandra (characterized by a head-like inflorescence with several spikes and by a trigynous pistil).

Anatomically, L. articulata can be distinguished from most other Cyperaceae by the tetracytic stomata and the absence of silica bodies in the leaf epidermis cells.

Ecology

L. articulata is found in shallow water (usually less than 0.8 m deep) in open swampy locations, open marshes, swamps in savanna-forests and along quiet streams, often near the coast. It grows in oligotrophic, slightly acid (pH 5.0-6.5) water. In Sumatra it occurs up to 1000 m altitude, in Peninsular Malaysia (Terengganu) at 1200 m and in Papua New Guinea up to 1750 m altitude. L. articulata often forms extensive communities.

Propagation and planting

In Borneo planting material of L. articulata is obtained through clump division and transplanted into ponds about 30 cm deep with black mud at the bottom. The planting distance is 30-40 cm, with each pocket containing 20-30 shoots. Before planting, the area is cleaned of weeds, but soil preparation is not practised. Natural reproduction of L. articulata in the Tasek Bera swamp is mainly vegetatively through rhizomes, with new shoots arising from the rhizome every 51-55 days.

Husbandry

Usually no special care is given to plantings of L. articulata .

Harvesting

L. articulata in Borneo can be harvested from a year after transplanting onwards, but material from 2-3 year-old plantings is superior. Harvesting is year-round and is done by pulling up 10-20 flowering stems together and cutting them to the required size. More recent reports from Borneo indicate that L. articulata is harvested twice a year. Cutting must preferably be done a few cm away from the rhizome because if the rhizome is damaged the plant will need more time to produce new culms.

Yield

No yield data are known. Total living biomass production for L. articulata in the Tasek Bera swamp in Peninsular Malaysia has been estimated at 2.2 g per m²per day (8.2 t per ha per year). This is much lower than the biomass production of other tropical aquatic sedges, such as Cyperus papyrus L. , which may be due to the low emergence rate of new stems in L. articulata.

Handling after harvest

The harvested stems of L. articulata are dried for 3 days, after which they are tied into bundles that measure 10 cm in diameter. These bundles are pounded with rice pestles until they are flat and ready for weaving.

Genetic resources and breeding

L. articulata beds in Tasek Bera are sometimes damaged due to burning by people hunting for turtles or clearing navigation paths, but it does not seem to be threatened with extinction. No germplasm collections or breeding programmes of L. articulata are known to be underway.

Prospects

Because of the wide range of packaging materials available nowadays, mats and other products made from L. articulata will remain of limited importance.

Literature

 1 Furtado, J.I & Mori, S. (Editors), 1982. Tasek Bera: the ecology of a freshwater swamp. Dr W. Junk Publishers, The Hague, the Netherlands. 413 pp.

• Heyne, K., 1927. De nuttige planten van Nederlandsch-Indië [The useful plants of the Dutch East Indies]. 2nd Edition. 3 volumes. Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel in Nederlandsch Indië. (3rd Edition, 1950. W. van Hoeve, 's-Gravenhage, the Netherlands / Bandung, Indonesia). pp. 313-314.
• Ikusima, I., 1978. Primary production and population ecology of the aquatic sedge Lepironia articulata in a tropical swamp, Tasek Bera, Malaysia. Aquatic Botany 4: 269-280.
• Kern, J.H., 1974. Cyperaceae. In: van Steenis, C.G.G.J. (Editor): Flora Malesiana. Series 1, Vol. 7(3). Noordhoff International Publishing, Leiden, the Netherlands. pp. 435-753.
• Koyama, T., 1985. Cyperaceae. In: Dassanayake, M.D. & Fosberg, F.R. (Editors): A revised handbook to the flora of Ceylon. Vol. 5. Amerind Publishing Co., New Delhi, India. pp. 144-148.

Authors

S. Brotonegoro