Plants forming large clumps, with both long and short rhizomes, the stems arising laterally, 4–14 dm, scabrous on the angles, rather lax, usually surpassing the lvs; lowest lvs reduced to bladeless sheaths, these splitting ventrally and becoming pinnately fibrillose; foliage lvs 3–6 mm wide, inversely W-shaped in x-section, the sheaths shallowly concave (and often with a central mucro) at the thickened mouth; ligule acute, triangular, much longer than wide; bracts sheathless, the lowest lf-like, shorter to slightly longer than the infl, the others much smaller; pistillate spikes 2–4, to 6 cm, often approximate and usually overlapping, erect, linear-cylindric, sessile or nearly so, sometimes apically staminate; pistillate scales lanceolate to oblong, from narrower and shorter to less often as wide as and longer than the perigynia, reddish-brown or purple-brown, usually with a conspicuous pale midrib, blunt to acute; perigynia planoconvex to nearly flat, ovate, 1.6–3.4 mm, three-fifths as wide, tapering to a minute, straight beak, 2-ribbed, otherwise nerveless or obscurely nerved on both faces; achene lenticular, filling the lower two-thirds of the perigynium; 2n=68. Abundant in swales and marshes, especially where seasonally flooded; Que. and N.S. to Minn. and Man., s. to Va. and Tex. (C. strictior) A putative hybrid with no. 190 [Carex aquatilis Wahlenb.] has been called C. ×abitibiana Lepage.
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