Plants colonial, long-rhizomatous, vegetative shoots widely scattered and inconspicuous from deep rhizomes. Culms 15-65 cm, smooth to scabrous distally. Leaves proximal sheaths with blades, brownish or purple-tinged, slender, 1.3-3.2 mm diam.; ligules (0.6-)1-6 mm, (0.8-)1-2 times longer than wide; leaf blades green, flat, 3-20 cm × 1.5-5 mm, herbaceous. Inflorescences 4-32 cm, 0.9-1.6 times as long as proximal bract; proximal bracts 4-22 cm, sheaths 0.5-5 cm, blades 3.5-17 cm; pistillate spikes ovoid to linear-cylindric, 6-40 × 3-5.8 mm; lateral spikes erect or ascending on stiff peduncles. Pistillate scales brown or purple tinged, apex awned or obtuse. Perigynia ascending to spreading, green, 2.5-4 × 1-2.2 mm, minutely papillose; beak minute, bent. Achenes light to dark brown, 1.8-3 × 1.2-1.6(-1.8) mm.

Fruiting late spring-early summer. Calcareous fens, bogs, and swales; 20-1000 m; Man., Ont., Sask.; Conn., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Mo., N.J., N.Y., N.Dak., Ohio, Pa., S.Dak., Va., W.Va., Wis.

See notes under 257. Carex meadii.

Stems 2-6 dm, in small clumps on long, slender, deep-seated, pale rhizomes, phyllopodic (at least the fertile stems) and often fibrillose at base, only seldom purplish below; lvs flat, 2-4.5 mm wide, surpassed by the stems; terminal spike staminate, strongly rough-pedunculate, 1.5-4 cm; pistillate spikes 1-3, mostly widely separated, erect on slender peduncles, 7-40 נ3-5 mm; bracts long-sheathing, the blade shorter than the stem; pistillate scales ovate, obtuse to acuminate or short-awned, brownish-purple-tinged with 3-nerved green center and hyaline margins; perigynia overlapping in mostly 3 rows, obovoid-fusiform, 2.5-3.5 mm, obscurely trigonous, with numerous fine nerves and 2 more prominent lateral ribs, broadest (1.5-2 mm) above the middle and evenly and broadly tapered or rounded to the beakless tip; achene broadly obovoid-trigonous, with concave sides, filling the perigynium; 2n=56. Meadows and low woods; Mass. to N.J. and Va., w. to Minn., Alta., and Nebr.

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.

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

Infrequent in northern Indiana in marly or sandy soils, bordering marshes and lakes; becoming frequent to locally common on the dunes where it occurs especially on low sandy interdunal flats; rare in southern Indiana, in open post oak flats.

......

Indiana Coefficient of Conservatism: C = 9

Wetland Indicator Status: FACW