Flora of North America species comparison

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

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

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

overtopped by culm;

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

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, if 2 then close together, dense, broadly turbinate to hemispheric or even globose;

primary leafy bract setaceous, exceeding clusters.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

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.

perianth absent.

bristles 6, some reaching to apex of fruit body.

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.

2–3 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.

= 12.