Carex rariflora

Culms phyllopodic, with dead leaf remains at base, 5-35 cm. Leaf blades 1-2.5 mm wide, margins sometimes involute, scabrid at tip. Inflorescences: proximal bracts 0.5-2 cm, much shorter than inflorescences; lateral spikes 6-15 × 3.5-5 mm, with 2-10 perigynia; terminal spikes 6-20 × 1-2.5 mm. Pistillate scales circular-ovate, 3-4.8 × 2.2-3.4 mm, long as and wider than perigynia, apex obtuse, sometimes mucronate. Staminate scales oblanceolate to obovate, 3.2-4.8 × 1.5-2 mm, apex acute to obtuse. Anthers 2-2.5 mm. Perigynia 2.5-4.5 × 1.6-2 mm, apex rounded; beak absent. 2n = 52.

Fruiting summer. Open bogs, meadows, seepage slopes, heath; 0-500 m; Greenland; St. Pierre and Miquelon; Man., Nfld. and Labr., N.W.T., Nunavut, Ont., Que., Yukon; Alaska, Maine; subarctic Eurasia.

Much like no. 178 [Carex limosa L.]; stems rarely over 3 dm, smooth, obtusely triangular; staminate spike 6-15 mm, short-peduncled; pistillate spikes 6-16 mm, with to 10 perigynia, on peduncles of their own length, separated by internodes to 15 mm; lowest bract to 2 cm; pistillate scales dark purple, usually concealing the perigynia and partly enclosing them at base; perigynia 2.8-3.9 mm, more than half as thick as wide, acutish but beakless; 2n=52. Circumboreal, s. in our range to cold bogs in N.B. and on Mt. Katahdin, Me.

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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