Globe Sedge

Some collections of Carex perglobosa from Utah show some characteristics of C. vernacula (A. Cronquist et al. 1972+, vol. 6).

Plants loosely cespitose. Culms often curved, bluntly trigonous, 5–15 cm, smooth-angled distally. Leaves: basal sheaths brown; ligules 0.4–1.6 mm; blades folded to involute, ± equaling culms, 0.8–2.2(–2.5) mm wide. Inflorescences 1–1.8 cm; spikes ca. 8–15, essentially indistinguishable in dense globose to ovoid head. Pistillate scales reddish brown to dark brown, ± translucent with broad whitish hyaline margins, broadly ovate, ± equaling perigynia, apex obtuse to acute, body shiny. Anthers 1–1.5 mm. Perigynia dark brown, finely 5–9-veined abaxially, faintly veined or essentially veinless adaxially, clearly inflated, broadly elliptic, 3.6–5 × 1.9–2.6 mm, delicate and membranous, shiny; stipe to 0.2 mm or essentially absent; beak poorly defined, 0.6–1.1 mm, smooth or slightly scabrous-margined.

Colo., Utah.

Fruiting Jul–Sep.

Dry alpine tundra, especially scree slopes, uncommon and local; 3600–4000m.

Carex perglobosa Mackenzie, Bull. Torrey Club 34: 606. 1908
"Carex incurva Lightf." L. H. Bailey, in Coult. Man. 390. 1885.
Carex incurva var. charlacea Kiikenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4^°: 114. 1909. (Type from Middle Park, Colorado.)
Loosely cespitose, from creeping, slender (1.5 ram. thick), brown rootstocks, the culms erect, 6-15 cm. high, slender, striate, smooth on the angles, usually exceeding the leaves, lightbrown, clothed at base with the dried-up leaves of the previous year; leaves clustered towards the base of the culms, the blades erect or somewhat spreading, 2-8 cm. long, 0.75-1.5 mm. wide, flattened at base, narrower but hardly involute above, light-green, not rigid, slightly roughened towards the apex, the sheath very thin ventrally, truncate at mouth, the ligule about as long as wide; spikes about 6-15, entirely undistinguishable, densely aggregated into a globose head about 1 cm. in diameter, the staminate flowers apical, very inconspicuous, the perigynia several to many, ascending or spreading; bracts absent; pistillate scales ovate-orbicular, very thin, brownish with silvery-hyaline apex and margin and lighter midvein, obtusish or acutish, rather wider than, exceeding or exceeded at maturity by the perigynia, the staminate scales narrower, sharper-pointed, lighter-colored; perigynia plano-convex, very membranaceous, straw-colored or yellowish-brown at maturity, ovate-elhptic, 4 mm. long, 2.25 mm. wide, very slightly sharp-margined, the margins smooth, inflated, finely many-nerved dorsally, obscurely finely several-nerved ventrally, substipitate, round-tapering at base, gradually tapering into a very sparingly serrulate or smooth beak one third of the length of the body or less, obliquely cleft dorsally, dark-colored, bidentulate, the orifice slightly hyaline; achenes lenticular, broadly oblong-obovate, 1.75 mm. long, about 1 mm. wide, substipitate, apiculate, very loosely enveloped by the perigynia; style straight, slender, not enlarged at base, jointed with the achene; stigmas two, slender, light-brown.
Type locality: Mt. Baldy, Summit County, Colorado (Mackenzie 167).
Distribution: Sunny slopes on alpine peaks, in calcareous districts, high mountains of central Colorado, and La Sal Mountains, Grand County, Utah. (Specimens examined from Mt. Baldy, Mt. McClellan, Gray's Peak, Mt. Harvard, Lake Creek, Silver Plume, Clear Creek, Arapahoe Peak, Colorado, and La Sal Mountains, Utah.)