Plants perennial, densely cespitose, knotty based, 20–40 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms filiform, leafy at base, wiry. Leaves ascending to erect; blades filiform, nearly terete, or channeled, sometimes compressed, nearly reaching distal inflorescence or much shorter, 0.2–0.3 mm thick, apex subulate. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 2–6, simple or reduced to 1 spikelet, branches ascending to divaricate or reflexed; leafy bracts single per cluster, filiform, setaceous, with clusters appearing lateral to bracts. Spikelets pale red brown, ellipsoid lanceoloid, 5–6(–8) mm, apex acute to acuminate; fertile scales oblong elliptic, convex, acuminate, 3.5–5 mm, apex broadly acute, midrib forming apiculus. Flowers: perianth bristles 6, reaching to or slightly past tubercle base, increasingly plumose from middle to base. Fruits 1–3 per spikelet, (2.5–)2.7–3(–3.4) mm; body light brown to brown, ellipsoid obovoid, distally conspicuously necked, tumidly lenticular, 1.7–2.5 × 1.5–1.8 mm; surfaces smooth or minutely transversely rugulose; tubercle conic subulate, 0.5–0.7 mm, base flaring.
More
Densely cespitose perennial 1.5–4 dm; stems very slender, triquetrous, lfless or 1-lvd near the base; lvs setaceous, about equaling the stem; infl of (1)2–5 spikelets on 1–2(3) short branches, subtended by an erect bract resembling a continuation of the stem, one branch diverging at a right angle, the other 1 or 2 erect or arcuate; spikelets light brown, 4–7 mm, with 2–4 fls and 1–3 frs; bristles 6, a little shorter to a little longer than the achene, strongly plumose toward the base; achenes brown, plump, elliptic to obovate, 2–2.7 mm, constricted just below the top, transversely rugulose; tubercle conic, 0.3–0.6 mm. Pine-barren bogs; N.J. to Fla., Tex., W.I., and C. Amer
Home
