General: Perennial, tufted herb from fibrous roots; stems 15-90 cm tall, exceeding the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight; blades flat, 1.5-3 mm wide, borne on the lower 1/3 of the stem.
Flowers: Spikes 4 to 12, aggregated into a 1-5 cm long ellipsoid head, unstalked, with both female and male flowers, the female flowers towards the tips; bracts subtending the spikes sheathless, reduced, the lowermost sometimes awnlike, about 0.5-1.5 cm long.
Fruits: Perigynia narrowly egg-shaped, 4-6.5 mm long, 1.2-2 mm wide, greenish-white or straw-coloured, more or less flattened, the margins narrowly winged to the bases, the upper 2/3 fringed with teeth, lightly several-nerved on both sides or nerveless below, the beaks obliquely cut on the upper surface, minutely bidentate, 1.2-2 mm long, narrowly margined and toothed below; female scales narrowly elliptical, greenish-white, with translucent margins, shorter and narrower than the perigynia; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, 1.1-1.5 mm long. vol6_4
Moist to wet ditches, lakeshores, marshes and meadows in the lowland and montane zones; rare in S and EC BC; E to NF and S to ME, MA, NC, GA, AL, MS, LA, OK, NM, AZ and CA.
