Flora of North America species comparison

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

erect to ascending, narrowly linear, wandlike, terete, leafy proximal to middle.

overtopped by culm;

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

erect to ascending;

blades proximally flat, 2.5–3.5 mm wide, apex tapering, tip abruptly blunt.

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

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

terminal, cluster of spikelets crowded, broadly turbinate to hemispheric, to 1.5 cm wide; leafy bracts linearsetaceous, slightly exceeding cluster.

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.

orangebrown, lancefusiform, 6–7 mm, apex acuminate;

fertile scales lanceovate, 4–5 mm, apex acuminate with excurved awn to 1 mm.

perianth absent.

bristles 3–4, some reaching tubercle tip, antrorsely barbellate.

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, 2–2.1 mm;

body brown with paler center, obovoidlenticular, 1.5–1.7 × 1.2–1.3 mm, margins flowing to tubercle;

surfaces finely transversely striate with minute pits;

tubercle lowtriangular, 0.3–0.5 mm.