Rhynchospora pallida

Plants perennial, cespitose, 40-100 cm, base bulbous; rhizomes stoloniferous, short, wiry. Culms erect or excurved, linear, leafy, trigonous, slender. Leaves slightly to much exceeded by culm; blades ascending, narrowly linear, proximally flat, 1-3 mm wide, apex trigonous, tapering gradually, setaceous. Inflorescences terminal; spikelet single, terminal cluster of spikelets crowded, hemispheric, 2.5 cm wide; leafy bracts linear setaceous, much exceeding cluster. Spikelets whitish to tan, narrowly lanceoloid, (3.5-)4-5.5 mm, apex acuminate; fertile scales lanceolate, 3.5-4(-4.5) mm, apex narrowly acute, minutely awned or apiculate. Flowers: bristles vestigial or obsolete. Fruits 1 per spikelet, (1.9-)2-2.3 mm; body brown with pale center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid, 1.5-2 × 1.5 mm, margins flowing to tubercle; surfaces longitudinally finely striate; tubercle depressed triangular, 0.2-0.3(-0.4) mm.

Fruiting late spring-fall. Sands and peats of clearings in pine flatwoods, barrens, and savannas; 0-200 m; Del., Md., N.J., N.Y., N.C., S.C., Va.

Stems 3-8 dm, usually surpassing the lvs, loosely clustered or solitary, bulbous-thickened at base and producing short, bulbous-tipped rhizomes; infl a dense hemispheric fascicle 1-2.5 cm thick, subtended by 2 unequal divaricate bracts; spikelets silvery to reddish, ovoid-attenuate, 4.5-5 mm, with a solitary perfect terminal fl; bristles 0-3, up to a fourth as long as the achene; stamens 2; achenes obovate, 1.2-1.6 mm, nearly as wide, smooth, brown with a pale central spot; tubercle broadly conic, 0.2-0.3 mm. Acid bogs along the coast; L.I. to N.C.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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