Plants loosely or densely cespitose. Culms erect or ascending, 7–30 cm × 0.2–0.5 mm; vegetative shoots taller than culms, (1.4–)1.7–3.7(–4.9) times as tall as tallest flowering culm, blades of vegetative shoots 1–3.5 times wider than bract blades. Leaves: basal sheaths white to light brown; nonbasal sheaths 1–4 mm; blades erect, drooping or recurved, dark green to grayish blue-green, 11–38 cm × 3–9 mm, usually exceeding culms. Inflorescences: spikes (3–)4 per culm, scattered; peduncles of proximal pistillate spikes erect, 3–15 mm; bracts dark green to glaucous, 1–10.5 cm × 1.5–4 mm, well developed, blade of distal lateral spike 5.6–17(–26) times as long as wide. Pistillate spikes: proximal usually basal, proximal spikes on usually erect peduncles, distal sessile to very short-pedunculate, 6–12 × 3.5–6 mm, often hidden in foliage. Staminate spike sessile or nearly so, (3.5–)4.5–10.2(–11.5) × 0.6–1.4(–1.6) mm, often hidden by distal bract and/or pistillate spikes. Pistillate scales 1.5–2 × 0.8–1 mm, midribs green, margins hyaline, apex acute, proximal scales of lateral spikes subtending perigynia. Staminate scales 2.6–3.6(–3.8) × 0.8–1 mm, midribs green, margins hyaline, apex obtuse. Anthers 1.2–1.8 mm. Perigynia (3–)8–13 per spike, spirally overlapping, finely veined, obovoid, 2.8–4.2 × 1.4–2 mm; beak tapering. Achenes ellipsoid, 2.6–4 × 1.2–1.8 mm, sides flat at maturity, filling perigynia. Style short, tapering from swelling just beyond attachment to achene, bent, ascending through entire orifice.
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Loosely tufted, seldom also with long rhizomes; fertile stems 0.5–2.5 dm, minutely hispidulous, much surpassed by the lvs; basal sheaths white to light brown; lvs roughened on the margins and toward the apex on the veins, those of the sterile shoots 3–9 mm wide, of the fertile ones 1.5–4 mm wide; terminal spike staminate, 0.5–1.2 cm, sessile or nearly so, often ± hidden by the bracts and pistillate spikes; pistillate spikes 2 or 3, 0.6–1.2 cm, often hidden in the foliage, the upper sessile or nearly so, the lowermost one usually basal, on a peduncle to 1.5 cm; pistillate scales acute; perigynia 3–9, overlapping, 2.8–4.2 mm, finely many-nerved as well as 2-ribbed, evidently trigonous, short-ellipsoid, rather abruptly narrowed to a short, slightly oblique beak with entire orifice; achene trigonous. Moist to wet woods and swamps; n. Fla. to La., n. to s. Ark., s. Ind., Va., and (mainly near the coast) Mass. (C. ptychocarpa, a preoccupied name)
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