Flora of North America species comparison

erect to excurved, leafy, obscurely trigonous, slender.

erect or curved, leafy, filiform, angularly fewribbed.

spreading to ascending, shorter than culm, crowded toward culm base;

blades linear, proximally flat, 1–3 mm wide, gradually involute, apically trigonous, subulate.

ascending-excurved, overtopped by culm;

blades filiform, involute, apex setaceous.

spikelet clusters 1–4, dense to open, mostly irregularly turbinate;

peduncles ascending, branches spreading to erect, ultimate branches with many spikelets; leafy bracts setaceoustipped, usually exceeding all clusters, or at least all but the distal.

spikelet clusters 1–2(–3), often sparse, ellipsoid or narrowly turbinate, less than 1 cm wide; subtending foliaceous bracts exceeding compounds.

light redbrown or brown, broadly ellipsoid to lanceoloid, 3–4 mm, apex acute to acuminate;

fertile scales ovate to obovate or suborbiculate, 2–3.5 mm apex acute to rounded or emarginate, midrib included or exserted as mucro.

erect or ascending, pale redbrown to brown, fusiform, 6–7 mm;

fertile scales elliptic, 4 mm, apex rounded or acute, midrib shortexcurrent or not.

perianth bristles mostly 6, rarely reaching fruit midbody, antrorsely barbellate.

perianth bristles 6, overtopping tubercle base, mostly retrorsely barbellate, sometimes smooth [forma laeviseta (E.

mostly 1 per spikelet, 2–2.5 mm, body dark brown, obovoid to subglobose, tumid or lenticular, 1.5–1.7 mm, transversely finely rugose to nearly level, intervals with very small, pitlike alveoli.

1–4(–5) per spikelet, 2.5–3 mm;

body pale brown, slender stipitate, ellipsoid, lenticular, 1.5–2 × 0.8–1 mm;

surfaces longitudinally minutely striate, obscurely transversely lowrugose, dotted;

tubercle narrowly triangularsubulate, flattened, 0.8–1.7 mm.

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) Fernald].