General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems triangular, 10-30 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades folded, 1.5-2 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem.
Flowers: Spikes 3 to 6, aggregated into a rather compact head, 1-2.5 cm long, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female ones towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, reduced, inconspicuous.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 4-6 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 back, with faint nerves or nerveless below, the beaks obscurely bidentate, up to 1 mm long, narrowly margined and toothed below; female scales elliptical, pointed, brown, with narrow translucent margins and lighter centres, longer and wider than the perigynia; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.5 mm long.
Mesic to dry meadows and rocky slopes in the subalpine and alpine zones; common in SC and SE BC, less frequent northward and on the SW coast, rare on S Vancouver Island, absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands and adjacent mainland; N to AK, YT and SW NT, E to SW AB and S to CO, UT, NV 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)
