Plants loosely cespitose; rhizomes short; stolons present, often long. Culms sometimes curved, slender, 10-40 cm. Leaves: sheaths gray-brown to pale brown abaxially, inner band thin, hyaline, often red tinged, summit prolonged, concave; ligules as long as wide; blades yellowish green to pale gray-green, flat, 5-20 cm × 1-3 mm, subequal or shorter than culms, soft. Inflorescences 1.5-5 cm × 7-12 mm; proximal bracts scalelike, sometimes bristlelike, shorter than spikes. Spikes 3-6, gynecandrous, proximal spikes separate, usually 1-1.5 cm apart, distal approximate, individually distinct, containing 5-15(-20) perigynia, oblong, 5-15 × 4-6 mm; terminal spike conspicuously staminate at base, long-clavate, 10-20 mm. Pistillate scales pale red-brown with lighter center and narrow hyaline margins, ovate, ± equaling, concealing perigynia, apex obtuse. Perigynia appressed-ascending, gray-green, often reddish dotted, often pale brown in age, finely several-veined, oblong-elliptic, 2.5-3.3 × 1.5-2 mm, widest near middle, coriaceous; beak entire or with few marginal teeth. Achenes pale brown to gray-brown, oblong, 1.75-2 × 1.25-1.5 mm, dull. 2n = 64.

Fruiting Jun-Aug. Coastal and estuarine marshes, mostly brackish soils, seashores; 0-600 m; Greenland; B.C., Man., N.B., Nfld. and Labr., N.W.T., N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que., Sask., Yukon; Alaska, Maine; Europe; Asia.

Tufted on short rhizomes; stems very slender, 2-4 dm, surpassing the lvs; main lvs 1-2 mm wide; spikes 2-4, closely approximate in an ovoid or oblong head 1-2 cm, the lateral pistillate, the terminal with slender staminate base; scales ovate, slightly shorter than the perigynia, brown with narrow hyaline margins; perigynia obovate-fusiform, multinerved, 1.5-3 mm, less than 2.6 times as long as wide, the beak a fifth as long as the body; achene lenticular; 2n=66. Salt-marshes; interruptedly circumboreal, s. to N.B. and Que. Our plants represent the irregularly distributed var. amphigena Fernald. (C. marina, misapplied)

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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