Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center


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Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

62. Cyperaceae, the Sedge Family

2. Carex L. -- Sedge

32. Carex lanuginosa Michx. -- Woolly sedge

Extensively colonial from scaly rhizomes; culms trigonous, 2-10 dm long. Leaves 2-5 mm wide; sheaths hyaline ventrally, the lower ones often purple-tinged dorsally, disintegrating and leaving a loose network of fibers. Spikes unisexual, the upper 1-3 (usually 2) staminate, 2-6 cm long, the lower 1-3 pistillate, remote, sessile or nearly so, cylindric, 1-4 cm long; bracts leaflike, the lowest one usually surpassing the inflorescence; pistillate scales brown to purplish-brown on the sides, acuminate to awned, shorter to longer than the perigynia. Perigynia brownish to yellowish-green to grayish-brown, or sometimes purplish, subterete, oblong-ovoid, 2.5-4(5) mm long, densely pubescent, many-nerved, contracted into the beak which is 1/4 to 1/3 the entire length of the perigynium, the beak teeth 0.3-0.8 mm long, divergent; achenes trigonous with concave sides, 1.7-2 mm long; stigmas 3, the style jointed with the achene. Jun--Jul. Wet meadows, marshes, shores, stream banks, springs, ditches and other wet places; common, often abundant; (N.B. and Que. to B.C., s to VA, TN, AR, TX and CA). C. lasiocarpa Ehrh., in part.


Carex lanuginosa (from Hermann 1970).

Previous Section -- Carex laeviconica Dewey -- Smoothcone sedge
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