Carex echinodes

From Flora of Indiana (1940) by Charles C. Deam

Description: Plants cespitose, often forming large, spreading clumps with 40 or more culms. Culms 40-90 cm; vegetative culms with 6-10 leaves, not strikingly 3-ranked, leaves clustered at apex. Leaves: sheaths usually with pale or white intervenal areas abaxially, Y-shaped hyaline area at collar 1-10 mm long, summits concave or truncate and barely prolonged beyond collar; ligules 1.3-3.5 mm; blades 3-5 per fertile culm, 2-35 cm × 1.5-3 mm. Inflorescences using arched or nodding, lower spikes well separated, 2.2-6.8 cm; proximal internode 10-24 mm; proximal bracts scalelike with bristle tips. Spikes 3-8, ovoid to globose, 5.5-14 mm, base rounded to tapered, apex obtuse to rounded. Pistillate scales white-hyaline, with green midstripe, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, 2.3-3.1 mm, much shorter by 0.7-1.4 mm and narrower than perigynia, margins hyaline or pale, sometimes involute, apex obtuse to acute. Perigynia ascending to wide spreading, green distally, distinctly to faintly 4+-veined on each face, ellicptic to narrowly ovate, plano-convex, (3.2-)3.6-4.6 × 1.3-2.1 mm, 0.4-0.5 mm thick, margin flat, including wing 0.3-0.45 mm wide, smooth; beak greenish, flat, ciliate-serrulate, abaxial suture with conspicuous white-hyaline margin, distance from beak tip to achene 1.4-2.4 mm. Achenes elliptic, 1.4-1.7 × 0.8-1.2 mm. n=37, 38, 39.

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Indiana Coefficient of Conservatism: C = 8

Wetland Indicator Status:  N/A