Flora of North America species comparison

erect, trigonous, multiribbed, rather stiff.

erect or arching, leafy toward base, filiform, terete, wiry.

overtopped by culm;

blades linear to filiform, channeled, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, margins deeply involute, apex setaceous.

spikelet clusters 1–3, turbinate to hemispheric, 1.5–3 cm wide; subtending leafy bracts mostly exceeded by distal compound.

spikelet clusters 1–2(–3), dense to open, narrowly to broadly turbinate;

branches capillary, variously elongate; leafy bracts setaceous, equaling or exceeding clusters.

pale brown to nearly white, fusiform, 4–5(–7) mm, apex narrowly acute;

fertile scales elliptic, 3.5–4 mm, apex narrowly acute, midrib excurrent as mucro.

variously brown, ellipsoid, 2–3 mm, apex sharply acute;

fertile scales ovate to nearly orbiculate, rounded, 1.2–1.8 mm, apiculate, convexcupulate, midrib slender, mostly included.

perianth bristles (15–)18–20, reaching tubercle tip, retrorsely barbellate.

perianth absent.

1 per spikelet, 2.5–3.2 mm;

body brown with pale center, obovoid distal to short stipe, lenticular, 1.7–2.2 × 0.8–1.5, margins narrow, wirelike, flowing into tubercle edges;

tubercle flat, narrowly triangular-subulate, 0.8–1 mm.

2–3 per spikelet, 0.7–0.9(–1) mm;

body pale, obovoid-lenticular, (0.5–)0.6–0.9 × 0.4–0.5 mm, margin wirelike;

surfaces transversely rugulose;

tubercle buttonlike, depressed triangular, 0.05–0.1 mm, base lunate atop rounded fruit body.

leaves overtopped by culm;

blades narrowly linear, proximally flat, (1.5–)2–3.5 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous.