General: Perennial, densely tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems 15-50 cm tall, usually longer than the leaves, roughened above on the angles.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades about 3 per stem, flat or slightly channeled, borne on lower 1/2 of the stem, 1-3 mm wide, the lower ones reduced.
Flowers: Spikes 2 to 6, the terminal one 0.4-0.7 mm long, with both male and female flowers, the female flowers towards the tips (sometimes almost all male and linear or almost all female and cylindrical), the lower spikes 1 to 5, ascending to widely spreading, remote to crowded, (1) 5- to 10-flowered, with female flowers only, unstalked; bracts inconspicuous, scalelike.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped to deltoid, 2.2-3.2 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, widest towards the bases, plano-convex, spreading, ascending or appressed, greenish or pale brown, finely-nerved to nerveless, sharp and thick margined, spongy below, the beaks 1/3 to 1/4 the length of the bodies, inconspicuously bidentate; female scales broadly egg-shaped, rounded at the tips, shorter than the perigynia, yellowish-brown, with greenish midribs, the margins whitish and translucent; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.2-1.5 mm long.
Bogs, fens, swamps and wet meadows in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; frequent E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, infrequent in SW BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to ME, PA, VA, GA, AR, KS, NM, AZ 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)
