General: Perennial herb from stout, creeping, dark rhizomes; stems 30-75 cm tall, arising singly or a few together, longer than the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths green, the lower ones bladeless, persisting, darkened; blades 2 to 5 per stem, crowded toward the base, flat or nearly so, 1-3 mm wide.
Flowers: Spikes 6 to 15, clustered into a cylindrical or egg-shaped, 1- to 5-cm long head, the spikes 0.7-1 cm long, short-stalked, with both female and male flowers (sometimes with nearly all male flowers or nearly all female flowers), the male flowers towards the tips; bracts 1 to 3, up to 3 cm long, like the scales.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped to narrowly egg-shaped, 3-4 mm long, 1.3-1.5 mm wide, appressed-ascending, light to dark brown, biconvex, smooth, few- to several-nerved below, short-stalked, the beaks bidentate, finely-toothed, 0.6-1.3 mm long; female scales egg-shaped, as long as and slightly wider than the perigynia, awn-tipped, straw-coloured to light brown or rarely dark brown, the midribs pale, the margins translucent; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, smooth, 1.2-1.7 mm long.
Moist to wet, often alkaline, meadows in the steppe and montane zones; common in SC and SE BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare northward; N to AK and SW YT, E to S PQ and S to MA, PA, VA, KY, MO, OK, 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)
