General: Perennial, rhizomatous herb from long, slender rhizomes; stems 20-90 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight, green; blades flat, 1.5-3 mm wide, the lower ones reduced to scales.
Flowers: Spikes 4 to 12, unstalked, 0.6-1 cm long, clustered into a 1.5- to 3.5-cm long cylindrical head, the upper spikes with both male and female flowers, the male flowers usually towards the tips, the lower spikes slightly remote; bracts subtending the spikes strongly reduced, only the lowermost sometimes bristlelike.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 3-6 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, yellowish- to reddish-brown, plano-convex, the margins winged and fringed with teeth above the middle, 8- to 14-nerved on the backs, nerveless or nerved at the bases, the beaks bidentate, about as long as the perigynia bodies; female scales egg-shaped, nearly or as long and wide as the perigynia, pointed at the tips, reddish- or yellowish-brown, the centres 3-nerved with narrow, green margins; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.5-2 mm long.
Dry, often sandy sites in the steppe and montane zones; frequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains except rare in NW BC; N to S YT and NT, E to S PQ and S to MA, NC, TN, IA, SD, NM and AZ.
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)
