Dwarf plants; leaves tufted, erect or spreading, thin-membranous or pellucid, light green, linear, 4-7 cm. long, 1.5-3 mm. wide at the middle, subulate at the apex, not at all revolute along the margins, glabrous, fenestrately many-nerved (the fenestrations especially conspicuous beneath); peduncles 5-21 per plant, slender, 6.5-19.5 cm. long, 3-costate, slightly twisted, glabrous; sheaths loose, 3-5 cm. long, much shorter than the leaves, glabrous, not fenestrate, deeply lobed at the apex; heads hemispheric, lightly flavescent-stramineous, 3-4.5 mm. in diameter; involucral bractlets scarious, hyaline or stramineous, varying from ovate to elliptic or obovate, about 3 mm. long, 2-2.5 mm. wide, obtuse at the apex, usually not much narrowed at the base; receptacular bractlets broadly elliptic, scarious, some-what flavescent along the midrib and at the apex, hyaline toward the margins, about 2.4 mm. long and wide, rounded at the apex, somewhat narrowed at the base, decidedly navicular and closely imbricate; staminate florets: pedicellate (pedicels about 0.5 mm. long); sepals 2, free to the base, obovate, about 1.5 mm. long and about equally wide at the apex, hyaline, transparent, conduplicate around the corolla-tube, carinate in a median line on the back, slightly emarginate at the apex, erect, glabrous throughout; corolla-lobes 2, minute, obtuse, non-glanduli-ferous; stamens 4; anthers brown; pistillate florets: pedicellate (pedicels about 0.5 mm. long); sepals 2, broadly obovate, hyaline, transparent, about 1.7 mm. long and equally wide at the apex, slightly emarginate, flat (not conduplicate), with a very broad wing or crest on the median keel on the back, glabrous; petals 2, free, hyaline, spatulate, transparent, about 1.9 mm. long, about 0.7 mm. wide at the apex; ovary 2-celled.
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