Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Annuals or short-lived perennials with elongate stolons, these slender, soft, clothed with pale brown scales.

Stems: culms solitary or few together, erect, acutely trigonous, 25–85 cm tall, 0.5–0.8 cm in diameter.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves few to several per culm. Blades shorter than the culm, linear, flat, 6–8 mm wide. Margins entire. Sheathing; sheaths pale green to pale brown. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in corymbs compound to decompound, with 3–10 rays of unequal length, these spreading, somewhat thickened, 2–14 cm long, secondary rays 2–5, 0.5–2 cm long, spikes pyramidal, dense, 2–3 cm long, 1–2 cm wide, the rachis densely hirsute with short yellowish brown hairs; spikelets 8–25– flowered, pale yellowish brown, tinged reddish brown, spreading, linear-lanceolate, slightly swollen, 5–15 mm long, 1.5–2.5 mm wide, rachilla not winged; glumes pale yellowish brown and tinged or flecked with reddish brown, thin and chartaceous to membranous, loosely spaced, broadly deltoid–ovate, margins whitish–hyaline, 1.8– 2.2 mm long, distinctly 5–nerved or 7– nerved, apex acute, often mucronulate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Ovary superior; stigmas 3.

Fruit: Achenes dark brown at maturity; broadly ellipsoid to obovoid; trigonous; 1⁄2–⅓ as long as the glume. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy: 2n = 36

Habitat: Wet areas.

Elevation Range: