Carex haydenii Dewey

Carex haydenii Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. II. 18: 103. 1854
Carex acuta var. erecla Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. 10: 265. 1826. (Type from western Massachusetts
probably.) "Carex aperta Boott" Carey, in A. Gray Man. 547. 1848.
Carex aperta var. Boott, 111. Carex 132. pi. 426. 1867. (Type from Rhode Island.) Carex aperta var. minor Olney, Caric. Bor.-Am. 10. 1871. (Based on C. aperta var. /S Boott.) Carex stricta var. decora L. H. Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 13: 85. 1888. (Type from Providence, Rhode
Island.) Carex stricta var. Haydenii Kiikenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4 20 : 330. 1909. (Based on C. Haydenii Dewey.)
Rather loosely cespitose from short-prolonged rootstocks and with short ascending stolons, the new shoots at the base of the old, the culms 5-10 dm. high, slender, 3 mm. thick near base, sharply triangular and strongly roughened above, usually much exceeding the leaves, papillate, aphyllopodic, not arising from the center of the dried-up leaves of the previous year; sterile shoots aphyllopodic, conspicuous; leaves with well-developed blades 2-4 to a fertile culm, on the lower fourth but not bunched, the blades flat or nearly so to base, with slightly revolute margins, thinnish, papillate, usually 1-2 dm. long, 2-4.5 mm. wide, long-attenuate, very rough towards the apex; sterile culm-leaves longer; sheaths whitish-hyaline or yellowish-tinged ventrally, strongly purplish-red-dotted, and smooth and not at all or very sparingly filamentose, concave or truncate at mouth, smooth and rounded dorsally; ligule as long as wide or somewhat longer; terminal spike staminate (usually with an additional sessile smaller one at base), linear, 2-5 cm. long, 3 mm. wide, the scales oblong-obovate, obtuse to acutish, reddishbrown with lighter center and hyaline margins; pistillate spikes 2 or 3, erect, sessile or nearly so, approximate or a little separate, oblong or linear, 1.5-3 cm. long, 4—5 mm. wide, occasionally staminate at apex, densely flowered, scarcely attenuate at base, the perigynia 25-100, spreadingascending or spreading in few to several rows; bracts sheathless, the lowest 2 mm. wide, normally exceeded by inflorescence, the upper much reduced, biauriculate; scales ovate or lanceolate, divaricate at maturity, long-acuminate to acute, cucullate-tipped, narrower than but strongly exceeding perigynia, from dark-brown to straw-colored, with broad lighter center and hyaline margins; perigynia broadly oval to suborbicular, 2-2.5 mm. long, 1.25-1.75 mm. wide, inflated, strongly biconvex in cross-section, 2-edged and 2-ribbed (the marginal), and nerveless or obscurely few-nerved, light-brownish at maturity, membranaceous, puncticulate and resinous-dotted, minutely granular towards apex, rounded or round-tapering at base and apex, substipitate, sometimes very sparsely serrulate above, abruptly very minutely beaked, the beak 0.2 mm. long, the orifice hyaline, entire or emarginate; achenes lenticular, suborbicular, small, 1 mm. long, loosely enveloped in lower half of perigynium-body, substipitate, yellowish, abruptly apiculate, jointed with the straight or bent, slender, somewhat exserted style; stigmas 2, slender, rather short.
Type locality: "On Missouri River near Fort Pierre," Nebraska Territory {Hayden).
Distribution: Swampy meadows in calcareous districts, New Brunswick to Minnesota, and southward to New Jersey, Illinois, and Missouri. (Specimens examined from New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersev, Pennsylvania, Ontario, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska.)