Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect or curved, leafy, filiform, angularly fewribbed.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

ascending-excurved, overtopped by culm;

blades filiform, involute, apex setaceous.

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.

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

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

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 absent.

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

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.

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.

.

) Fernald].

= 12.