General: Perennial, tufted herb from long, creeping rhizomes; stems triangular, with rough edges, 30-120 cm tall, equalling the leaves.
Leaves: Sheaths tight, short; blades flat, well distributed along the stem, 3-7 mm wide, the lower ones slightly reduced.
Flowers: Spikes 3 to 10, the terminal 1 to 3 short-stalked, with male flowers, the lower spikes 2 to 7, with mostly female flowers and often several male flowers at the tops, with long stalks, 3-14 cm long, spreading or drooping; bracts subtending the spikes leaflike, sheathless, the lower ones longer than the inflorescence, the upper ones reduced.
Fruits: Perigynia egg-shaped, 2-3.6 mm long, 1.3-2.3 mm wide, brownish-green, 3-angled, the angles rounded, smooth to somewhat wrinkled, marginally 2-nerved, entire or minutely bidentate; female scales egg-shaped, shorter or longer than the perigynia, often shortly awn-tipped, brownish-red, with lighter 3-nerved centres and translucent margins, often whitish at the tips; stigmas 2; achenes lens-shaped, granular, 1.1-1.5 mm long.
Notes: Although Standley (1985) treated this taxon as a variety of C. aquatilis, we have not. To do so, it would require a similar treatment for many other taxa in our region now recognized at the species level. Also, for practical reasons, merging C. sitchensis, a community dominant, with C. aquatilis would result in resource managers naming the community after the latter.
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)
A very shade-intolerant, submontane to montane, Western North American sedge distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Occurs in cool mesothermal climates on wet to very wet, nitrogen-rich soils (Moder and Mull humus forms); its occurrence decreases with increasing elevation and continentality. Scattered to plentiful in semiterrestrial communities on water-collecting sites (fresh and brackish water marshes) with gleysolic or organic soils and with more or less stagnant water tables at or above the ground surface. Often associated with Carex obnupta. Characteristic of nutrient-rich wetlands.
