General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems triangular, 20-70 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades flat, 1.5-3 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem.
Flowers: Spikes 3 to 7, aggregated into a loose, cylindrical to elliptical head, 1-5 cm long, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female ones towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, reduced, inconspicuous, the lowermost sometimes awnlike.
Fruits: Perigynia narrowly egg-shaped, 4.5-6.5 mm long, 1.7-2.5 mm wide, straw-coloured to dark brown, the margins winged nearly to the bases, the upper 1/2 fringed with teeth, lightly several-nerved on the backs, with faint nerves or nerveless below, the beaks shallowly bidentate, up to 1 mm long, narrowly margined and toothed below; female scales elliptical, pointed, yellowish-brown, with broad translucent margins and lighter centres, longer and wider than the perigynia; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.5-2 mm long.
Moist to wet meadows, grassy slopes, swamps, streambanks and forests in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common throughout BC except absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands; N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to MI, IL, MN, NM, UT, ID and CA.
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)
