Rhynchospora nivea
showy whitetop
erect to spreading-ascending, leafybased, trigonous or compressed, ribbed.
exceeded by scape;
blades narrowly linear to filiform, 0.2–2 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous.
terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafyinvolucrate, hemispheric to globose, 0.5–1.5 cm wide;
involucral bracts (0–)1–4, ascending to recurved, green, (0.7–)2–5(–6) cm × 0.2–2 mm.
white, ovoid, 5–7 mm;
fertile scales several, boat-shaped, 2.5–3.5 mm, keel curved, not sharp.
perianth absent.
0.8–1 mm;
body yellow to near black, broadly pyriform-obovoid, tumidly lenticular, 0.5–0.8 × 0.5–0.8 mm, margin narrow, flowing into tubercle;
surfaces transversely sharply wavyrugose, ridges bordered by rows of fine, linear, vertical lattices;
tubercle depressedtriangular, lunate-based, shortbeaked 0.2(–0.3) mm, gray-crustaceous.
Rhynchospora nivea
Rhynchospora nivea, of the “Dichromena” of North America, is the smallest fruited and most slender and has the fewest and shortest involucral bracts (in some plants the bract is entirely absent). Involucral bracts of R. nivea are almost entirely green.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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