Field Marks: This sedge is distinguished by its slender-pointed, straw-colored spikelets with pointed scales.
Habitat: Moist fallow fields, wet prairies, along streams, around ponds and lakes.
Habit: Usually stout perennial with short, thick rhizomes.
Stems: Erect, smooth, triangular, up to 3 feet tall.
Leaves: Long, narrow, somewhat rough along the edges, up to 1/3 inch broad.
Flowers: One per scale, with many scales per spikelet, each spikelet narrowed to a slender point, straw-colored, up to 1 inch long, the entire cluster of spikelets subtended by 3-8 leaflike bracts.
Scales: Broadly lanceolate, pointed at the tip, yellow to straw-colored, 1/8-1/4 inch long.
Sepals: 0.
Petals: 0.
Stamens: 3.
Pistils: 1; styles 3; ovary superior.
Fruits: Achenes narrowly oblong, 3-angled, reddish, 1/20-1/10 inch long.