General: Perennial herb from short, stout rhizomes, also producing more elongate, slender stolons with thickened terminal buds; stems clustered, thread-like, grooved, (5) 10-30 (40) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths brownish to straw-coloured below, cylindrical, not flaring upwards; blades lacking.
Flowers: Spikes solitary, terminal, lanceolate to egg-shaped, 4-8 mm long, 3- to 9-flowered, somewhat flattened.
Fruits: Scales 2.5-5.5 mm long, the two lower ones larger than the others, the lowest one subtending a flower, egg-shaped, blunt, dark brown with translucent margins and a lighter midrib; perianth bristles 4 to 6, equalling or surpassing the achenes, or more or less reduced; stigmas 3; achenes 3-angled, or plano-convex, equally or unequally 3-angled, greyish brown, 3-ribbed, cellular roughened, 1.9-2.6 mm long including the short (0.6 mm), barely differentiated, nosecone-like tubercles that are confluent with the bodies of the achenes and that do not form distinct apical caps on the achenes.
Bog margins and wet (often calcareous) sites in the steppe and montane zones (rarely subalpine or alpine); infrequent in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains in S BC, rare northward; circumpolar, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to ME, PA, OH, IN, IL, NE, NM, AZ, CA and MX; Greenland, Eurasia.
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)
