Flora of North America species comparison

acutely angled, 40–150 cm, scabrous.

10–45 cm, smooth to scabrous distally;

bases (remnants of old leaves) slightly or not at all fibrous.

basal sheaths red-brown or brown;

sheaths of proximal leaves bladeless, glabrous, fronts red-brown to copper-brown, spots absent, indistinctly ladder-fibrillose, apex U-shaped;

blades hypostomic, abaxially papillose.

blades pale to bright green, shorter to longer than culms, 0.8–2.5 mm wide, herbaceous, smooth to scabrous abaxially, papillose to scabrous adaxially.

with both staminate and pistillate spikes;

peduncles of staminate spikes 0.4–9.9 mm;

proximal nonbasal bracts leaflike, shorter than inflorescences.

usually pendent; staminate 1–3, base cuneate or attenuate.

proximal pistillate spikes 1–4 (basal spikes 0);

cauline spikes overlapping, proximal 2 spikes usually separated by less than 7 mm, with 4–14 perigynia; staminate spikes 5–14 × 0.5–1.8 mm.

divergent, pale brown, inflated, loosely enclosing achenes, obovoid, dull, apex rounded, obtuse or truncate, glabrous.

pale green, veinless, ellipsoid, 2.3–3.3 × 0.8–1.2 mm, longer than wide;

beak straight, pale green, 0.6–1.1 mm, weakly ciliate-serrulate, apical teeth 0.1–0.4 mm.

constricted on one or both margins or lacking constrictions;

style base straight.

brown, ellipsoid, acutely trigonous in cross section, 1.2–1.7 × 0.7–1.3 mm.

bract longer than inflorescence, 3–6 mm wide.

scales pale to copper-brown, midvein reaching apex, broad, apex of body retuse, aristate.

pistillate scales pale to dark reddish brown, with narrow white margins, lanceolate to ovate or obovate, 2.2–3.4 × 0.4–1.8 mm, equaling or exceeding perigynia, apex usually acuminate, sometimes acute or mucronate; staminate scales lanceolate to ovate, 2.8–6 × 0.6–1.9 mm, apex acute to acuminate.

1.5–2.7 mm.

3.