Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect to ascending-arching, slender, nearly terete, multiribbed.

overtopped by culm;

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

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

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

spikelet clusters 3–7, widely spaced, clusters loosely turbinate to hemispheric, to 1.3 cm wide.

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.

brown to pale red-brown, lance-fusiform, 3–5.5 mm;

fertile scales elliptic, 2.5–4 mm, acute, midrib short-excurrent.

perianth absent.

perianth bristles 6, ± equaling tubercle.

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.

1 per spikelet, (2.5–)2.7–3.3(–3.5) mm, body pale brown with yellowish center, ± broadly oblong-obovoid distal to stipe, lenticular, 1.5–2 × 0.8–1 mm;

tubercle narrowly triangularsubulate, (1–)1.2–1.5(–2) mm, less than 0.5 mm wide at base.

leaves exceeded by culm;

blades flat, linear, 1–2 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous.