General: Perennial herb from long, creeping rhizomes and rusty-reddish roots; stems 20-60 cm tall, arising singly or a few together, much longer than the leaves, usually reddish at the bases.
Leaves: Sheaths tight, sometimes breaking into threads at the bases; blades 1 to 3 per stem, deeply channeled, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem, 1-2 mm wide, the lower ones reduced.
Flowers: Spikes 2 to 4, the terminal one linear, 1.5-2.7 cm long, long-stalked, with male flowers, the lower spikes 1 to 3, with female flowers, cylindrical, 1-2.5 cm long, slightly separate, long-stalked, nodding; bracts subtending the lowest spike leaflike, 2-10 cm long, sheathless or short-sheathing, shorter than the inflorescence, the others reduced.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped to elliptical, 2.3-4.2 mm long, 1.8-2 mm wide, green, somewhat compressed, densely pimpled, with 2 prominent marginal nerves and 4 to 7 other nerves on each face, short-stalked, beakless or short-beaked, the beaks cylindrical, 0.5-2 mm long; female scales egg-shaped to nearly globe-shaped, rounded to pointed or long-pointed, about as long as and as wide as the perigynia, light to dark brown, with lighter, 3-nerved centres; stigmas 3; achenes 3-angled, unstalked, smooth, 1.5-2.2 mm long.
Bogs, fens and shorelines in the lowland, montane and subalpine zones; frequent throughout BC except absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to NJ, PA, OH, IN, IL, IA, NE, NM, UT, NV and CA; 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)
