Flora of North America species comparison

erect to curved, leafy, obscurely trigonous to nearly terete, few ribbed, slender.

arching or erect, leafy-based, distally wandlike, terete, multiribbed.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

blades linear, proximally flat, 2.5–5 mm wide, apex subulate, trigonous.

clusters 1 or 2–3, then widely spaced, narrowly turbinate to hemispheric, 1.5–2.5 cm wide; subtending leafy bracts often exceeded by distal cluster.

terminal, headlike clusters of spikelets, clusters dense, leafy-involucrate;

involucral bracts several, spreading to downcurved, longest 6–13 cm × 5–10 mm, mostly white to midbract, then green, abruptly narrowly linear.

pale brown to nearly white, ellipsoid, 3.5–5.5 mm, apex acute;

fertile scales elliptic, 3–3.5(–4) mm, apex acute or acuminate, midrib excurrent as mucro.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

fertile scales boatshaped, sharply curved-keeled, 5 mm, apex acute.

perianth bristles 10–12, slightly overtopping tubercle, retrorsely barbellate or rarely smooth, base often setose.

perianth absent.

1(–2) per spikelet, (2.3–)2.5–3 mm;

body pale brown with paler center, stipitateobovoid, lenticular, 1.5–1.8(–2) × 0.9–1.2 mm;

surfaces transversely striate, relatively smooth, rim narrow, flowing to tubercle base;

tubercle narrowly triangularsubulate, 0.5–1.2 mm.

several per spikelet, 1.5–2 mm;

body yellowish to deep brown, tumidly lenticular, broadly obovoid to orbicular or oblate, 1.5 mm, widest at or toward midbody, margins flowing to tubercle;

surfaces with many fine rows of vertical shallow lattices, their contiguous ends making transverse rows of papillae;

tubercle crescent-based, depressed-triangular, 0.5 mm, apex acute.

leaves mostly overtopped by culm;

blades narrowly linear to filiform, proximally flat, 0.5–1.5 mm, apex tapering, trigonous.

= 12.