Flora of North America species comparison

polystichous, mostly spreading or excurved, often exceeding culms;

sheaths entire, abaxially smooth or sparsely hirtellous;

ligule absent;

blades filiform, to 0.5 mm wide, somewhat involute, abaxially glabrous or ascending-strigillose.

erect or ascending, 1/2–2/3 plant height, bases of leaves hard, leathery, usually dark brown or castaneous;

sheaths distally bristly-ciliate, backs chestnut brown, glabrous;

ligule absent;

blades narrowly linear, 1–2(–3) mm wide or thick, mostly strongly involute or adaxially deeply sulcate, margins scabridulous, surfaces glabrous.

terminal;

spikelets sessile or subsessile in single capitate leafy-involucrate cluster;

scapes filiform;

involucral bracts leafy, setaceous, greatly overtopping inflorescence.

anthelae mostly compound, ascending-branched, longer than broad;

scapes wandlike, narrowly linear, 1.5–2(–3) mm thick, distally round or slightly compressed;

proximalmost leafy involucral bract mostly shorter than anthela or equaling it, rarely slightly longer.

greenish, cylindric to lanceoloid-cylindric, 5–10 mm;

fertile scales narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 1–1.5 mm, acute, glabrous, midrib strong, excurrent as cusp.

chestnut brown to dull brown, ellipsoid, ovoid, or cylindric, 5–20 mm;

fertile scales broadly ovate to nearly orbiculate, 3.5–4.5 mm, apex rounded, sometimes ciliolate, midrib reaching tip or excurrent as short mucro.

stamens 1;

styles 2-fid, slender, bulbous-based, smooth or papillate.

stamens 2–3;

styles 2-fid, flat, fimbriate.

pale, tumidly obovoid, 0.5–0.7 mm, cancellate, pits horizontally rectangular in 5–7 vertical rows per side.

lustrous brown, lenticular-obovoid or obpyriform, 1.5–2 mm, appearing striate, with many fine, vertical lines of isodiametric pits.

= 20.

= 20.