Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect or excurved, linear, leafy, trigonous, slender.

ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape;

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

slightly to much exceeded by culm;

blades ascending, narrowly linear, proximally flat, 1–3 mm wide, apex trigonous, tapering gradually, 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.

terminal;

spikelet single, terminal cluster of spikelets crowded, hemispheric, 2.5 cm wide; leafy bracts linearsetaceous, much exceeding cluster.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;

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

whitish to tan, narrowly lanceoloid, (3.5–)4–5.5 mm, apex acuminate;

fertile scales lanceolate, 3.5–4(–4.5) mm, apex narrowly acute, minutely awned or apiculate.

perianth absent.

bristles vestigial or obsolete.

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 per spikelet, (1.9–)2–2.3 mm;

body brown with pale center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid, 1.5–2 × 1.5 mm, margins flowing to tubercle;

surfaces longitudinally finely striate;

tubercle depressedtriangular, 0.2–0.3(–0.4) mm.

= 12.