General: Perennial grass from fibrous roots; stems slender, flaccid, sometimes somewhat decumbent, creeping at base, 30-100 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades flat, 2-8 mm wide; ligules finely toothed, pointed, 1-1.5 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an open panicle, 5-20 cm long, the branches relatively few, eventually diffuse, 5-15 cm long; spikelets 4- to 6-flowered, narrowly egg-shaped, 4-7 mm long; glumes broadly rounded at the wax-papery tips; lemmas egg-shaped, sharply 7-nerved, finely hairy or minutely rough, eroded at the rounded tips, 2.5-3.5 mm long; paleas 4 to 5 times as long as wide; anthers about 1 mm long.
Shallow water, marshes, bogs and wet meadows in the montane zone; rare in EC BC; amphiberingian, N to NT, E to NF and S to ME, MA, PA, WV, MI, WI, MN and WY; E Asia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)