General: Perennial, tufted herb from long, creeping rhizomes; stems 30-110 cm tall, arising singly or a few together, shorter than the leaves, dark red at the bases.
Leaves: Sheaths tight, breaking into threads at the base; blades 2 to 5 per stem, flat, with margins flat or nearly so, borne on lower 1/2 of the stems, 2-5 mm wide, the lower ones reduced; ligules long, membranaceous.
Flowers: Spikes 3 to 5, the terminal 2 (sometimes 1 or 3) linear, 1-2.5 cm long, long-stalked, with many male flowers, the lower spikes 2 to 3, cylindrical, with female flowers, unstalked to short-stalked, erect; bracts subtending the lowest spike leaflike, sheathless or short-sheathing, the lowest usually longer than the inflorescence.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped to nearly globe-shaped, 3.3-5 mm long, 1.8-2 mm wide, dull brownish-green, somewhat inflated, densely soft-hairy, the numerous ribs obscured, the bases round, unstalked, the beaks 0.8-1.5 mm long, deeply bidentate, the teeth 0.3-0.9
Ditches, streambanks, swamps, marshes and wet meadows in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in S BC, absent on N Vancouver Island, the Queen Charlotte Islands and adjacent mainland; E to NF and S to TN, TX, NM 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)
