Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains
62. Cyperaceae, the Sedge Family
2. Carex L. -- Sedge
8. Carex brevior (Dewey) Mack. ex Lunell -- Fescue sedge
Tufted from short rootstocks; culms sharply trigonous, 3-10 dm long,
exceeding the leaves. Leaves 1-4 mm wide; sheaths white-hyaline
ventrally, entirely green to green-and-white mottled or white-hyaline between
the nerves dorsally. Spikes bisexual, gynaecandrous, 2-8, subglobose
to ovoid, the lateral ones rounded to clavate at the base, 5-15 mm long, aggregate
to somewhat separate in oblong to slender heads 1.5-5 cm long; bracts
much reduced, inconspicuous or the lowest seldom exceeding the head; pistillate
scales obtuse or acute, shorter and narrower than the perigynia. Perigynia
green to pale brown, firm-textured, plano-convex, broadly ovate (the body suborbicular),
3-4.5 mm long, 3/5 to 3/4 as wide, several-nerved dorsally, nerveless or obscurely
few-nerved ventrally, wing-margined to the base, abruptly contracted or somewhat
tapered to the serrulate, bidentate beak which is 1/4 to nearly 1/2 the entire
length of the perigynium; achenes lenticular, 1.7-2 mm long; stigmas
2. Jun--Jul. Wet meadows, low to mesic prairie, ditches, shores and stream banks;
common; (ME to B.C., s to DE, TN, AR, TX, NM and OR). C. molesta Mack.
After thoroughly studying northern Great Plains material, I am not convinced
of the occurrence of C. molesta in this region. Authors differ on the
criteria used to distinguish C. molesta from C. brevior, and
the characteristics used to make the distinction seem to be weakly or not
at all correlated in our material. I am thus excluding C. molesta from
this treatment under the assumption that the species either does not occur
here, or it is not sufficiently distinct from C. brevior to warrant
recognition.
Previous Section -- Carex bicknellii Britt. --
Bicknell's sedge
Return to Family -- Cyperaceae - The
Sedge Family
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U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
