General: Perennial, loosely tufted herb from short rhizomes; stems 5-30 cm tall, longer than the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades 3 to 6 per stem, flat, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem, 1-2 mm wide, the lower ones reduced.
Flowers: Spikes 3 to 5, 4-10 mm long, borne close together at the top of the stems, with female flowers, except the terminal spike with a few male flowers at the base, short-stalked; bracts subtending the female spikes with short sheaths, scalelike, the lowermost barely reaching the top of the inflorescence and with blackish earlike lobes at the top of the sheath.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 2-3 mm long, 0.7-1 mm wide, inflated, dull green to bluish-white, nerveless, with a powdery surface, beakless; female scales egg-shaped, pointed to rounded at the tips, shorter and narrower than the perigynia, purplish-black to reddish-brown, with greenish midribs and translucent margins; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.2-1.4 mm long.
Moist to wet meadows and shorelines in the montane to alpine zones; rare in N and C BC; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT and E to NF; Greenland, Iceland, Eurasia.
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)
