Description
From CNHP Wetland Guide 2012: Habit: culms arising singly or few together, rhizomes slender, scaly, roots covered with yellowish-brown tomentum. Culms: slender, sharply triangular, reddish at base, 2-6 dm tall, exceeding the leaves, usually aphyllopodic, old leaves present. Leaves: 1-3 Blades: deeply channeled, somewhat glaucous, gray green, 1-3 mm wide. Sheaths: thin, hyaline ventrally, shallowly concave at mouth, lower sheaths sometimes slightly filamentose.
Bracts: lowest narrowly leaf-like or occasionally setaceous, sheathless or short-sheathed, brown-auricled, 2-10 cm long, the upper reduced. Spikes: 2-4, reddish to yellowish brown on long, nodding peduncles. Terminal spike is staminate, erect or drooping, linear, 1-3 cm long, 2.5 mm wide. Lateral spike is pistillate, nodding, 1-2.5 cm long, 5-8 mm wide, not crowded, perigynia appressed or ascending to spreading. Pistillate Scales: variable, commonly ovate to suborbicular, short-tapering, obtuse or cuspidate at apex, narrower and shorter than perigynia to nearly equaling them, yellowish brown to dark reddish brown with a green 1 to 3 nerved center. Perigynia: broadly ovoid, somewhat compressed, rounded-truncate and substipitate at base, rounded at apex or broadly tapering to a very shrot conic tip, densely papillate (minute protrusions), yellowish green or glaucous green, 2.3-4.2 mm long, 2 mm wide. Nerves: 4-7 evident on each face, margin. Beaks: Stigmas: 2
Diagnostic Characteristics
From CNHP Wetland Guide 2012: Main Characteristics:
Staminate spikes, nodding or erect 1-3 cm long; pistillate spikes, nodding 1-2.5 cm long
Culm base reddish with long lower bract up to 10 cm long
Leaves are channeled
Pistillate scales are as broad as or broader than perigynium, scales are equal to or barely exceeding perigynium length