Plants perennial, cespitose or solitary, to 70 cm; rhizomes slender, scaly, to 2 mm thick. Culms erect, slender, leafy-based, trigonous, several-ribbed. Leaves spreading to erect, overtopped by culm; blades narrowly linear, proximally flattened, 0.5–3 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous. Inflorescences terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafy-involucrate; involucral bracts several, flaring to recurved, white from broadened base nearly to median, then green to tapered tip, longer bracts 13 cm × 2–7 mm. Spikelets white, ovoid, 5–7 mm, apex acute; fertile scales many, boat shaped, sharply curved keeled, 3–4(–5) mm, apex acute or blunt. Flowers: perianth absent. Fruits several per spikelet, 1.5–1.7(–2) mm; body yellow to mahogany, broadly pyriform obovoid, tumidly lenticular, 1 × 0.5–0.7 mm, widest at apex, margins thickened, interrupted at base of tubercle; surfaces transversely undulate rugose, ridges contiguous, of short linear papillae; tubercle broadly triangular, 0.5–0.6 mm, gray crustaceous, apex short acuminate. 2n = 12.
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Stems slender, 2–6 dm, solitary or few together on slender stoloniform rhizomes; blades 2–3 mm wide, usually shorter than the stem; spikelets whitish, compressed at anthesis, more fusiform at maturity, 4–7 mm, numerous in a dense terminal head subtended by 4–7 widely spreading, linear, foliaceous, very unequal, conspicuously bicolored bracts with a white base; scales keeled, ca 8–12, not much imbricate, only 1–3 subtending perfect fls, the others with staminate fls or some empty; perianth wanting; achenes obovate, 1 mm, transversely rugose, capped by the paler, depressed tubercle. Damp, often sandy soil; se. Va. to Mex. and W.I. (Dichromena c.)
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