Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains
62. Cyperaceae, the Sedge Family
2. Carex L. -- Sedge18. Carex disperma Dewey
Loosely tufted or single from slender rhizomes; culms slender, weak, trigonous, 1-4 dm long, shorter than to exceeding the leaves. Leaves soft and spreading, 1-2 mm wide, the sheaths tight, hyaline ventrally. Spikes bisexual, androgynous, 2-5, sessile, few-flowered and very small, with 1-6 perigynia and 1 or 2 staminate flowers, to 5 mm long, remote or the upper spikes close together in interrupted heads 1.5-2.5 cm long; bracts sheathless, inconspicuous, resembling the pistillate scales or filiform and to 2 cm long; pistillate scales white-hyaline except for the midrib, acuminate or mucronate, mostly 2/3 as long as the perigynium. Perigynia unequally biconvex to nearly terete, ellipsoid, 2-3 mm long, strongly nerved and rounded on the margins, otherwise obscurely to plainly many-nerved, the beak minute, oblique; achenes lenticular, elliptic, 1.4-1.7 mm long; stigmas 2. May--Jun. Swamps, bogs and springs; rare in e and nc ND, frequent in the Black Hills; (Circumboreal, in N.Amer. s to NJ, IN, SD, NM, UT and OR).
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