Plants cespitose; rhizomes appearing elongate in old clumps, 1.5-5 mm wide, mostly 1 shoot per node. Culms 25-75 cm; vegetative culms few, inconspicuous, usually fewer than 12 leaves, not strikingly 3-ranked. Leaves: sheaths with adaxial hyaline band, summits U-shaped; distal ligules 1.7-3.6 mm; blades 4-5 per fertile culm, 10-25 cm × 1.8-3.2 mm. Inflorescences open, yellow-green, 2-5 cm × 6-14 mm; proximal internode 5-11 mm; 2d internode 5-13 mm; proximal bracts scalelike or with bristle tip shorter than or equaling inflorescences. Spikes 3-6, distant, distinct, ellipsoid to ovoid, 7-12 × 5-10 mm, base rounded to acute, apex rounded. Pistillate scales white-hyaline with green midstripe, ovate, 2-3.5 mm, reaching base of perignyium beaks, narrower than perigynia, apex obtuse to rounded. Perigynia 15-80 in larger spikes, ascending, straw colored, green distally, inconspicuously veined on each face, reniform to orbiculate, flat, 4-5.3 × 3.5-4.5(-4.9) mm, 0.4-0.6 mm thick, margin flat, including wing 1-1.5 mm wide, finely granular-papillose (30X); beak pale or green at tip, flat, ciliate-serrulate, abaxial suture with conspicuous white-hyaline margin, distance from beak tip to achene 2-2.7 mm. Achenes elliptic, 1.8-2.2 × 1.2-1.5 mm, 0.4-0.6 mm thick. 2n = 80.

Fruiting late spring. Wet woods, bottomlands; 0-300 m; Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ky., La., Miss., Mo., N.C., Okla., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va.

Much like no. 76 [Carex brevior (Dewey) Lunell]; lvs 2-3 mm wide; pistillate scales much narrower and shorter than the perigynia; perigynia 4.5-5.7 נ3.3-4.5 mm, the body generally wider than long, nerveless or nearly so ventrally. Moist soil on the coastal plain; se. Va. to Ga., Ark., and Tex., and inland to Tenn. and Mo.

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

©The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. Used by permission.