General: Perennial herb from slender rhizomes; stems 1 to 3, stiff, erect, 2-25 cm tall, much longer than the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths brown below, tight, the ligules much longer than wide; blades 4 to 8, clustered near the base, 0.3-0.6 mm wide, margins in-rolled, stiff, erect to ascending, the tips blunt.
Flowers: Spikes solitary, 5-12 mm long, 5-9 mm wide, with both female and male flowers, the few erect male flowers towards the tips, the lower 3 to 12 flowers female, reflexed; bractless.
Fruits: Perigynia few, narrowly lanceolate, 3-5 mm long, 0.8-1 mm wide, pale green, brownish-green or straw-coloured, soon reflexed, more or less circular in cross-section, membranaceous, smooth, obscurely many-nerved, unstalked, the beaks not differentiated from the bodies; female scales narrowly egg-shaped, round-tipped, wider than and about 1/2 as long as the perigynia, light chestnut-brown, early deciduous, the margins sometimes translucent; stigmas 3; achenes 3-angled, 2-2.5 mm long.
Shorelines, streambanks, calcareous fens and wet meadows in the montane and subalpine zones; infrequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains and N of 52degreeN; circumboreal, N to AK, YT and NT and E to NF; Greenland, Iceland, Eurasia, S South America.
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)
