Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials with coarse, horizontally creeping rhizomes 0.8–1.5 cm in diameter.

Stems: culms solitary or few together, arising in a row along the rhizome, dull green, terete (cylindrical), not nodose, 70–300 cm tall, 5–10 mm in diameter below.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves reduced to 3–5 bladeless sheaths, or with blades up to 10 cm long. Margins entire. Sheaths 10–40 cm long, the lower ones dusky brown, soon disintegrating into reticulate fibers, the upper ones pale green, the orifice oblique. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences anthelate, compound to partially decompound, recurved to nodding, with numerous spikelets, the primary rays 3–8, 1–6 cm long, secondary rays up to 2 cm long; involucral bracts 2–3, the lowest one subulate, erect, 1–3 cm long, the other bract(s) membranous, scale-like; spikelets solitary and,/or in clusters of 2–3, rusty brown, ovoid to ovoid–ellipsoid, 6–15 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, acute; glumes ovate to elliptic, 2.5– 3.2 mm long, membranous, ± with reddish brown resinous spots on upper median portion, margins broadly white–hyaline, ciliate toward apex, the green midnerve prolonged as a mucro at the obtuse to shallowly emarginate apex; bristles 2–5, shorter than to as long as the achene, retrorsely spinulose– scabrous. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 3. Ovary superior; stigmas 3.

Fruit: Achenes grayish brown; broadly ovoid; 1.8–2.5 mm long; plano–convex. Seeds 1; seed coat thin; free from pericarp; embryo basal; endosperm abundant.

Ploidy: 2n = 38; 40; 42

Habitat: Occurring in fresh and saltwater marshes.

Elevation Range: 0–1,220 m.