Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect, slender, leafy-based, trigonous, several-ribbed.

overtopped by culm;

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

spreading to erect, overtopped by culm;

blades narrowly linear, proximally flattened, 0.5–3 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous.

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

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

terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafy-involucrate;

involucral bracts several, flaring to recurved, white from broadened base nearly to median, then green to tapered tip, longer bracts 13 cm × 2–7 mm.

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.

white, ovoid, 5–7 mm, apex acute;

fertile scales many, boatshaped, sharply curvedkeeled, 3–4(–5) mm, apex acute or blunt.

perianth absent.

perianth absent.

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.

several per spikelet, 1.5–1.7(–2) mm;

body yellow to mahogany, broadly pyriformobovoid, tumidly lenticular, 1 × 0.5–0.7 mm, widest at apex, margins thickened, interrupted at base of tubercle;

surfaces transversely undulaterugose, ridges contiguous, of shortlinear papillae;

tubercle broadly triangular, 0.5–0.6 mm, graycrustaceous, apex short acuminate.

= 12.