Carex gigantea Rudge

Stems 5–12 dm, smooth, solitary or few together from long, dark, scaly, sympodial rhizomes; basal sheaths persistent, brownish; lvs evidently septate-nodulose, 5–16 mm wide, the uppermost nonbracteal one with a sheath 5–20 cm; staminate spikes 1–5, 2–8 cm, on a collective peduncle 3–8 cm that is surpassed by or only slightly surpasses the uppermost pistillate spike; pistillate spikes 2–5, ascending, not crowded, their subtending bracts leafy, with a sheath 0.5–5 cm; pistillate scales 4.5–10.5 mm, slender, not awned; perigynia 20–75, ± spreading, smooth and shiny, strongly multinerved, 11–18 × 4–6 mm, with a short fat body and long conic beak 6–9 mm, this bidentate with smooth teeth; achene loosely enveloped, 2.2–2.6 × 2.7–3 mm, broadly stipitate, obpyramidal with rounded or truncate summit, concavely trigonous, with thickened angles; style persistent and becoming bony, straight or weakly contorted below. Swamps and wet woods, chiefly on the coastal plain; Del. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the Mississippi Valley to s. Ind.