General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems 20-80 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades flat, 2-4.5 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem.
Flowers: Spikes 4 to 12, aggregated into a 1- to 3-cm long egg-shaped to cylindrical head, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female ones towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, reduced, inconspicuous or the lowest bristlelike.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 3-3.5 mm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, dull green to brownish, more or less flattened, the margins winged nearly to the bases, the upper 1/2 fringed with teeth, lightly several-nerved on both sides or nerveless below, the beaks bidentate, less than 1 mm long, narrowly margined and toothed below; female scales elliptical, brownish, with translucent margins, somewhat shorter and narrower than the perigynia; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, about 1 mm long.
Wet meadows and streamsides in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in mainland BC south of 57degreeN, rare northward, absent from Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands; N to AK and NT, E to NF and S to ME, MA, PA, OH, IN, IL, IA, NE, CO, UT, NV 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)
