General: Perennial herb from slender, creeping rhizomes; stems 5-60 cm tall, arising singly or a few together, shorter or longer than the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths smooth, thin, some lower ones persisting; blades 6 to 12 per stem, bluish-green, channeled, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem, 0.5-3.5 mm wide.
Flowers: Spikes 2 to 4, the terminal one linear, 1-2.5 cm long, with male flowers, the lower spikes 1 to 3, cylindrical, with female flowers, the lower more or less remote and long-stalked, the upper unstalked or short-stalked, erect; bracts subtending the lowest female spikes sheathing, leaflike, sometimes exceeding the inflorescence, the upper bracts awnlike.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 3.5-4.5 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, light green or whitish, densely pimpled, with 2 marginal nerves, numerous, crowded, spreading, short-stalked, tapering to the tips, beakless; female scales egg-shaped, equalling or slightly shorter than the perigynia, purplish-brown, the centres pale green, the margins wide, translucent, the tips round; stigmas 3; achenes 3-angled, 2-2.5 mm long.
Bogs, fens, swamps and moist to wet open forests in the lowland and montane zones; common along the coast, less frequent in E BC (Rocky Mountains); disjunct circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to MA, NY, MI, WI, MN, CO, ID and OR; Iceland, N Europe and E Asia.
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)
A very shade-intolerant, submontane to montane, circumpolar sedge (transcontinental in North America). Occurs on wet to very wet, nitrogen-medium soils within boreal, cool temperate, and cool mesothermal climates. Scattered in semi - terrestrial communities on gleysolic or organic soils with slow-moving groundwater near or at the ground surface (predominantly in fens, bogs,. and marshes). Characteristic of wetlands.
