Sturdy Sedge

Carex agrostoides Mackenzie, Bull. Torrey Club 34: 607. 1908
Densely cespitose, the rootstocks short, stout, blackish, fibrillose, the culms 4-8 dm. high, exceeding the leaves, slender but strict, sharply triangular, roughened on the angles, brownish-black at base and conspicuously clothed with the dried-up leaves of the previous year, the lower bladeless; leaves with well-developed blades 2-4 to a culm, usually 2-4 dm. long, very long-attenuate, 1-2 mm. wide, flat at base, strongly involute above, light-green, stiff, roughened towards the apex, the sheaths tight, conspicuously white-hyaline ventrally and sparingly red-dotted, truncate at mouth, the ligule wider than long; head decompound, 4-7 cm. long, 8-20 mm. thick, the lower one or two clustered, more or less separate, the upper closely aggregated; spikes very numerous, closely sessile, distinguishable with difficulty, oblong-ovoid, usually 2-5 mm. long, 1.5-2.5 mm. wide, androgynous or staminate at both ends, containing 1-10 appressed perigynia; bracts absent, or few and short (1.5 cm. long); scales oblong-ovate or lanceolate, obtusish to short-awned, greenish-straw-colored or light-brownish with 3-nerved green or in age whitish midrib and conspicuous hyaline margins, wider than but slightly exceeded by the mature perigynia; perigynia plano-convex, lanceolate-cuneate, 2.5-3.5 mm. long, scarcely 1 mm. wide, membranaceous, light-greenish, in age straw-colored, scarcely spongiose at base, margined to base, serrulate at base of beak, nerveless ventrally, obscurely few-nerved dorsally, minutely short-stipitate, round-tapering at base, tapering at apex into a beak as long as or longer than the body, with serrulate margins and white-tipped bidentate apex; achenes lenticular, narrowly oblong-ovoid, yellowishbrown, 1.5 mm. long, 0.5 mm. wide, truncately substipitate, tapering at apex and shortapiculate; style slender, straight, slightly enlarged at base, jointed with achene; stigmas two, light-reddish-brown, slender, long.
Type locality: Luna, northwest of Mogollon Mountains, Socorro County, New Mexico (Wooton. July 28, 1900. in herb. New Mexico Agricultural College).
Distribution : Arid regions, Arizona and New Mexico to Sonora. (Specimens examined from New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora.)