General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots, stems triangular, 30-90 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades flat, 2-4 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem, the lowermost leaves reduced to scales.
Flowers: Spikes 5 to 10 aggregated into a dense head 1-2.5 cm in diameter, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female ones towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, awned.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 3-4.5 mm long, 1-1.5 mm wide, light green, straw-coloured, or light 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 obscurely bidentate, up to 1.5 mm long, narrowly margined and toothed below; female scales elliptical, light brown, somewhat shorter and narrower than the perigynia; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 0.8-1.3 mm long.
Bogs, swamps, lakeshores, ditches, wet meadows and moist forests in the montane to alpine zones; frequent throughout BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to S YT and NT, E to SK and S to SD, 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)
