General: Annual, sweet-scented, tufted herb from short rootstocks; stems slender, 3-20 cm tall.
Leaves: Few, all near the bases; blades mostly 0.5-2 (2.5) mm wide, about as long as the stem.
Flowers: Inflorescence of dense, more or less short head-like clusters, the terminal unstalked, the others (if present) on slender rays up to 3 cm long, each cluster with dense spikes, the spikelets 6- to 20-flowered, rarely more, 4-10 mm long, 1-2 mm wide, flattened; involucral bracts 2 to 4, elongate, 1-15 cm long, some or all of them much surpassing the inflorescence.
Fruits: Scales evidently (5-) 7- to 9-nerved, lanceolate to egg-shaped, loose, green, turning brown at maturity, not closely appressed, 1-1.7 mm long excluding the recurved, slender awn-tips, these mostly 0.3-1 mm long; rachillas not winged, persistent, the scales falling from them at maturity; stamens solitary; achenes 3-angled, 0.6-1 mm long.
Moist to wet, often sandy sites in the lowland and steppe zones; rare on S Vancouver Island and SC BC; cosmopolitan, E to PQ and NB and S to FL, TX, NM, AZ, CA and MX; Asia, S America, Africa.
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)
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