General:
Perennial herb from long rhizomes; stems sharply triangular in cross-section with concave sides, when growing in water, stiff and emergent most of their lengths, 40-250 cm tall.

Leaves:
Few, basal, less than 1/2 the length of the stems; sheath orifice often splitting; blades 1 to 3, V-shaped near the base and triangular to asymmetrically flattened on the sides near the tips, smooth or the angles more or less rough near the tips, 2-8 mm wide, 25-200 cm long.

Flowers:
Spikes 2 to 15, terminal, unstalked, 5-15 mm long, 3-5 mm wide in unstalked, headlike clusters; involucral bracts solitary, leaflike, erect or nearly so, resembling an extension of the stem, (1) 3-20 cm long.

Fruits:
Scales bright orange- to red- or purplish-brown or often straw-coloured, with numerous, short, linear marks, 2.7-4 mm long, broadly egg-shaped, smooth or the awns sparsely minutely-spined, deciduously fringed with small hairs, the midribs prominent, mostly paler, the tips awned, rounded to pointed, cleft, the clefts 0.1-0.4 mm deep, the awns somewhat bent, 0.2-0.6 mm long; perianth bristles (2) 5 to 6 (7), orange-brown, minutely spined backwards, slender to stout, about 1/2 as long to equalling the achenes; achenes brown, smooth, glossy, thickly plano-convex or unequally biconvex, or 3-angled, the angles rounded, 1.8-2.5 mm long, the beaks 0.1-0.3 mm long.

Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia

If more than one illustration is available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below. Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.

Illustration Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Scirpus americanus Pers.
Scirpus chilensis Nees & Meyen ex Kunth
Scirpus conglomeratus Kunth
Scirpus olneyi A. Gray
Scirpus pungens var. longisetus Benth. & F. Muell.