Flora of North America species comparison

erect or ascending, slender, leafy proximal to middle, somewhat stiff.

erect to spreading-ascending, leafybased, trigonous or compressed, ribbed.

overtopped by culm;

blades ascending, ± filiform, proximally flat or slightly concave, to 1 mm wide, apex narrowing, trigonous, abruptly blunt.

exceeded by scape;

blades narrowly linear to filiform, 0.2–2 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous.

spikelet clusters 1–2, if 2 then close together, dense, broadly turbinate to hemispheric or even globose;

primary leafy bract setaceous, exceeding clusters.

terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafyinvolucrate, hemispheric to globose, 0.5–1.5 cm wide;

involucral bracts (0–)1–4, ascending to recurved, green, (0.7–)2–5(–6) cm × 0.2–2 mm.

redbrown, ovoid, 2–2.5(–4) mm, apex acute;

fertile scales broadly ovate, 1.5–1.9(–2) mm, apex acute to acuminate, midrib excurrent as awn to 0.5 mm.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

fertile scales several, boat-shaped, 2.5–3.5 mm, keel curved, not sharp.

bristles 6, some reaching to apex of fruit body.

perianth absent.

2–3 per spikelet, 1–1.2(–1.4) mm;

body dull dark brown with paler brown center, lenticular, broadly obovoid to broadly ellipsoid, 1 × 0.8 mm, margins narrow, flowing to tubercle;

tubercle nearly equilaterally triangular, 0.2–0.3 mm.

0.8–1 mm;

body yellow to near black, broadly pyriform-obovoid, tumidly lenticular, 0.5–0.8 × 0.5–0.8 mm, margin narrow, flowing into tubercle;

surfaces transversely sharply wavyrugose, ridges bordered by rows of fine, linear, vertical lattices;

tubercle depressedtriangular, lunate-based, shortbeaked 0.2(–0.3) mm, gray-crustaceous.