Eleocharis minima Kunth

• Region

  South America

• Country

  Brazil

• State/Province

  Mato Grosso

• County/Municipio

  Barra do Garças Mun.

• Locality

  Serra do Roncador. ca. 210 km along new road NNE of village of Xavantina. (ca. 50 km due S of Royal Society-Royal Geographic Society Base Camp.) At "Córrego do Gato".Two hundred meters east of main road.

• Elevation

  Alt. 450 m. (1476 ft.)

• Coordinates

  -12.85, -51.75

• Distribution

  Map all specimens of this taxon

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Eleocharis
Flora of Brazil
STATE OF MATO GROSSO
SERRA DO RONCADOR
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BOTANICAL
NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN
03147611
Municipio de Barra do Garzas: ca. 210 kin along new road NNE of
village of XAVANTINA. (Ca. 50 kin due S of Royal Society-Royal
Geographic Society Base Camp. Base Camp is at 12°5rS. 51°45’W.)
Alt.ca.450 m. At “Corrego do Gato”. Side of main road. 9 Sept 1968
Study area of 10 km radius around Base Camp is situated on crest of tne Serra do
Roncador, a divide between the Xingu drainage (via Rio Suia Mi$u) to west and Araguaia
drainage (via Rio das Mortes) to east. The yet undissected few-km wide crest is flat or
gently rolling with a few low lateritic scarps and ridges. Brook valleys with very gentle to
moderately steep slopes. Base Camp area is exactly at climatic boundary between
Amazonian forest region and Central Brazil ‘'cerrado'5 region (savanna sens, lat.) NW half
of study area is covered with the outer edge of the continuous Amazon forest, here a
slightly semideciduous dry mesophytic forest 15-18 m tall on the upland, taller along the
seasonally dry brooks. SE half of area has, on the upland, xeromorphic semideciduous
cerrado, in the form of midtail open scrub or open-canopv tree-and-scrab woodland, with
evergreen gallery forests 20-30,m tall along the permanent brooks. Usually a band of
seasonally marshy grassy campo, a few meters to a few tens of meters wide, borders the
gallery' forests, separating them from the cerrado, but where the campo is lacking, the
campo grades directly into gallery forest through a narrow band of its arboreal form,
‘‘cerradao’’. The campos usually have scattered circular groves of cerrado scrub several
meters in diameter on slightly raised soil, each with a termite mound. On the upland die
cerrado province grades into the continuous Amazon forest province through a few-km
wide ecotone of cerradao. Underlying rock is various kinds of sandstone, giving rise to
slightly clayey fine-sandy deep latosols, very infertile and reddish or vellowish-tan with
almost no humus on upland under cerrado, and dark red with more clay under dry forest.
In restricted areas under cerrado, small laterite blocks or quartz pebbles form a shallow
subsurface layer permeable to roots and rainfall, or the upper soil layer may be purely of
laterite pebbles. Valley soils are deep, light-grav fine sand with little or no clay, with no
humus on the drier upper slopes, and black with humus in the upper layer on moister or
saturated lower slopes and valley floors. Shales underlie soils in a few valleys. At this
date the Base Camp region has not yet been settled; the forests are virgin; the cerrado and
campo are uncut and ungrazed but have been subject to ground fires set by Indians every
3-5 years. In the cerrado, these infrequent fires temporarily reduce density of the lower
shrubs but otherwise have no effect on the physiognomy.
Habitat of this n°: open low ground, flooded in rainy season, now dry.
(Originally natural grassy campo between cerrado and gallery forest, now
bulldozed.) This n°: sedge forming carpet,
leg. George Eiten & Liene T. Eiten, n° 8666
03147611