Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect to ascending, leafy, stiff.

overtopped by culm;

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

shorter than scape;

blades narrowly linear, (1–)2–3 mm wide, margins involute, apex trigonous, tapering.

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

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

clusters 1–2, if 2 then close together, dense, broadly turbinate to hemispheric or lobedglobose;

primary leafy bract linear, stiff, exceeding clusters.

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.

light to dark redbrown, lanceovoid, 3.5–6 mm, apex acuminate;

fertile scales ovate, convex, 3–3.5(–4) mm, apex acuminate, low midrib excurrent or not.

perianth absent.

perianth bristles 6, reaching at least to tubercle base, plumose from base to more than 1/2 length of fruit body.

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(–2) per spikelet, (2–)2.5–2.8(–3) mm;

body redbrown or brown, tumidly obovoid, (1.5–)2–2.2 × 1–1.7 mm;

surfaces interruptedly transversely rugulose;

tubercle broadly conic, 0.5–0.8(–1) mm, base broadly 2lobed, apex often apiculate.