Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect or excurved, lax, leafy, slender to wiry.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

overtopped by culm;

basal leaves spreading, twisted, distal longer, erect or ascending;

blades proximally flat, 1–3 mm wide, apex trigonous, 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 1–4, proximalmost widely spaced, spikelets elongate, open, turbinate or compactlobed hemispheric;

branches erect to ascending; leafy bracts setaceous, exceeding proximal clusters, exceeded by distal clusters.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

mostly dark brown to brown, globose to broadly ovoid, (2–)2.5–3(–4) mm, apex acute;

fertile scales broadly ovate to orbiculate, 1.7–2.3 mm, apex obtuse to rounded or emarginate, midrib mostly included, sometimes excurrent as apiculus.

perianth absent.

perianth bristles 6 or less, antrorsely barbellate, of various lengths.

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.

1–3 per spikelet, 1.5–1–8 mm (–2 mm in var. pinetorum);

body tumidly biconvex;

surfaces transversely wavyrugose, intervals of vertically rectangular alveolae or transverserugosity indistinct, surface isodiametrically alveolate or cancellate;

tubercle shortconic to patelliformapiculate.

= 12.