General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems 30-80 cm tall, well exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades flat, 2-3 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem.
Flowers: Spikes 4 to 6, aggregated into an elongated, 2-4 cm long head, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female ones towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, scalelike, the lowermost one occasionally prolonged.
Fruits: Perigynia lanceolate or narrowly egg-shaped, 6-8 mm long, 2-2.3 mm wide, light green to straw-coloured or brownish, more or less flattened, the margins winged nearly to the bases, the upper 1/2 fringed with teeth, many-nerved on both sides, with spongy bases, the beaks 2-3 mm long, bidentate, broadly-margined, toothed below; female scales egg-shaped, brownish, with green centres, with translucent margins, somewhat shorter and narrower than the perigynia, short-awned; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 2.5-3 mm long.
Dry to moist meadows, grassy slopes and open forests in the steppe and montane zones; common in SC BC, less frequent elsewhere E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, the Queen Charlotte Islands and the adjacent mainland; N to SW YT, E to SW SK and S to NM, AZ and OR.
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)
