Globe Sedge

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.)