Flora of North America species comparison

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

lax, leafy, mostly excurved, slender.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

shorter than culm;

blades ascending, narrowly linear, proximally flat, 2–4(–5) mm wide, apex trigonous, short-subulate, tapering.

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 3–7(–10), dense, all but most distal widely spaced, broadly turbinate to ovate or hemispheric.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

light red-brown, lanciform, 5 mm, apex acuminate;

fertile scales lanceolate, 4–4.5 mm, apex acuminate, midrib excurrent as awn.

perianth absent.

bristles 6, reaching past tubercle base, usually to or slightly past its tip, antrorsely barbellate.

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.

2(–4) per spikelet;

stipe and receptacle curled-setose, (0.5–)0.6–08(–1) mm;

body glossy, brown with pale center, narrowly obovoid-lenticular, 1.2–1.5 mm, surfaces minutely striate, sometimes transversely minutely rugulose with wavy rows of dark minute dots;

margins narrow, strong, flowing to tubercle;

tubercle narrowly triangular, slightly concave-sided, flattened, setulose-ciliate, 0.7–1.1 mm.

= 12.