Flora of North America species comparison

leafy at base, filiform, wiry.

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

blades filiform, nearly reaching inflorescence tip or much shorter, to 0.3 mm thick, apex tapering.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

spikelet clusters mostly 2–6, simple or reduced to 1 spikelet, often with 2 capillary branches, one divaricate or reflexed, 1 ascending; leafy bracts single per cluster, filiform, setaceous, with clusters appearing lateral to bracts.

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 redbrown, ellipsoidlanceoloid, 5–6(–8) mm, apex acute to acuminate;

fertile scales narrowly ovate, 3–5(–6) mm, apex acute, midrib included or shortexcurrent.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

perianth bristles 6, not reaching past fruit midbody, stubby, plumose to near tip.

perianth absent.

3–8 per spikelet, 2–2.5 mm;

body light brown to brown, ellipsoid-obovoid, tumidly lenticular, 1.5–2 × 1.6–1.7 mm;

surfaces faintly, interruptedly crossrugulose, apically indented under tubercle;

tubercle lowconic, 0.5 mm, base flaring, circular.

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.

= 12.