Scleria minor

Plants perennial; rhizomes clustered, nodulose, rather slender, to 3 mm thick, hard. Culms in tufts, usually filiform, very slender, 35-80 cm, base 1-2 mm thick, glabrous or nearly so, somewhat scabrous toward apex. Leaves: sheaths purple tinged, scarcely winged, glabrous or minutely pilose; contra-ligules ovate, quite short, rigid; blades attenuate, keeled, shorter than culms, 1-2.5 mm wide, usually glabrous or nearly so. Inflorescences axillary and terminal, fasciculate; fascicles (1-)2(-3), 10-18 × 4-8 mm, each with 1-5 spikelets, the lateral on long filiform peduncles; bracts subtending inflorescence leaflike, lanceolate, 3-9 cm, long acuminate-attenuate, usually glabrous. Spikelets bisexual and staminate, brown, 3-6 mm; staminate scales lanceolate-acuminate, pistillate scales ovate, midrib excurrent, awnlike. Achenes brownish gray or with dark longitudinal bands, ovoid, 1.5-2 mm, smooth, shining, apex distinctly umbonate; hypogynium somewhat reduced, obscurely 3-angled, low, covered with whitish siliceous, papillose-spiculose crust.

Fruiting summer. Wet sandy or peaty soils in pinelands and savannas or boggy areas; 0-800 m; Ala., Del., D.C., Fla., Ga., La., Md., Miss., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Pa., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va.

Scleria minor is mostly confined to the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains; inland at higher elevations it is very uncommon and usually found in bogs. Some authors subsume the species under a broadly conceived S. triglomerata (R. K. Godfrey and J. W. Wooten 1979; J. W. Kessler 1987).

Very slender, to 8 dm, from long rhizomes; main blades 1-3 mm wide, long-attenuate, usually wholly glabrous; cymes 1, occasionally 2 or 3, the lower short-peduncled; bracts foliaceous, the lowest erect, 1-2 mm wide; scales as in no. 1 [Scleria triglomerata Michx.]; achenes white, apiculate, 1.5-2 mm, the body about as thick as long. Damp sandy or peaty soil on the coastal plain; L.I. to S.C. Perhaps better treated as S. triglomerata var. minor Britton. (S. triglomerata var. gracilis)

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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