General: Perennial herb from long, slender rhizomes; stems 5-30 cm tall, single or a few together, longer than the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; ligules wider than long; blades 3 to 5 per stem, narrowly in-rolled, borne on the lower 1/2 of the stem, about 0.5 mm wide, the lower ones persisting, reduced.
Flowers: Spikes solitary, usually with both female and male flowers, the few male flowers towards the tips, sometimes the spikes with all male flowers or all female flowers, the male segment broadly cylindrical, the female segment egg-shaped, 5-15 mm long, 2-4 mm wide, erect; bractless.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 2.5-4 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, yellowish to brownish-black, inflated, shiny, finely and many nerved above, reflexed when ripe, short-stalked, the beaks faintly toothed, about 0.5 mm long, bidentate; female scales egg-shaped, shorter but wider than the perigynia, pointed, reddish-brown to brown, the centres lighter; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.2-1.5 mm long.
Bogs, swamps, fens and wet meadows in the upper montane to alpine zones; common in BC in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to MA, PA, MN, MI, ND, CO, UT, NV and OR; Greenland, 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)
