Awl Fruited Sedge

Plants with basal sheaths of previous year not persistent. Culms easily compressed, to 120 cm × 7 mm, scabrous. Leaves: sheaths usually all with blades, green; fronts rugose, indistinctly linearly veined, apex colorless, fragile, convex, not forming extension, erose; ligules acute, 10 mm, free limb to 0.8 mm; blades not epistomic, to 100 cm × 15 mm. Inflorescences densely spicate, elongate, cylindric, with 15–25 distinguishable branches, 5–15 × 4 cm; proximal internode to 10 mm. Scales hyaline. Perigynia pale brown with red-brown veins, 15-veined abaxially, 7-veined adaxially, to 6 × 2 mm, base distended proximally, cordate; stipe to 0.4 mm; beak to 3.5 mm, serrulate. Achenes ovate, to 2 × 1.5 mm; stalk to 0.3 mm; persistent style base cylindric.

Carex stipata Muhl.; Wilid. Sp. PI. 4: 233. 1805
Carex Boscii Willd.; Spreng. Syst. 3: 812. 1826. (Type from North Carolina.)
"Carex vulpinoiJea Michx." Torr. Ann. Lye. N. Y. 3: 390. 1836.
Loncoperis stipata Raf. Good Book 27. 1840. (Based on Carex stipata Muhl.)
Carex stipata var. crassicurta Peck; Howe, Ann. Rep. N. Y. State Mus. 48: 128. 1897. (Type
from New York.) Carex stipata var. subsecuta Peck; Howe, Ann. Rep. N. Y. State Mus. 48: 128. 1897. (Type
from New York.)
Densely cespitose, the rootstocks short-prolonged, stout, tough, dark, fibrillose, the culms stout, 4-6 mm. thick at base, erect but weak and flattened in drying, 3-12 dm. high, from shorter than to exceeding the leaves, triangular with concave sides, the angles slightly winged and strongly serrulate especially above, light-brown at base; leaves with well-developed blades 3-6 to a culm, the blades erect-ascending, green, flaccid, flat, 1.5-5 dm. long, 4—8 mm. wide, the upper part serrulate on the margins and roughened below, the sheaths septatenodulose dorsally, and thin, cross-rugulose, not thickened at mouth and easily breaking ventrally, prolonged above base of blade, the ligule very conspicuous, longer than wide, colored on the margin; spikes numerous, yellowish-brown, in a compound, terminal, oblonglinear to ovoid head 3-10 cm. long, 1-2.5 cm. thick, the lower branches often somewhat separate; separate spikes hardly distinguishable, the staminate apical flowers inconspicuous, with the usually 4-10 ascending or spreading perigynia beneath; lowest bract bristle-form, 5 cm. long or less, often wanting, the others, if present, short; scales ovate-triangular, brownishhyaline with 3-nerved green center, acuminate or cuspidate, narrower than and about the length of the bodies of the perigynia; perigynia plano-convex, lanceolate, thick, 4-5 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, yellow at maturity, membranaceous, sharp-edged to base, strongly severalnerved dorsally, strongly few-nerved ventrally, substipitate, spongy and truncate-rounded at base, tapering into a serrulate beak about the length of the body, dorsally cleft, bidentate, the teeth triangular, appressed, reddish-brown-tinged; achenes lenticular, short-apiculate, substipitate, plump, ovate-orbicular, 1.5-2 mm. long, 1.25-1.75 mm. wide; style slender, straight, strongly enlarged at base, jointed with achene; stigmas two, 1.5-2 mm. long, slender, light-reddish-brown.
Tvii: LOCALITY: "Habitat in Pennsylvania."
DtSTBiBOTioK : S% :im|ts and wet meadows, Newfoundland to southern Alaska, and southward rth Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas. New Mexico, and ce n tral California; one of the nnist widely
distributed of the ,u l of Carex; also iii Japan. I Specimens examined from Newfound-
land, Quebec, Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine. New Hampshire, Vet raont, Massachusetts. Rhode Island. Connecticut, New York, Ni ' iware,
Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North ( arolina, Tenni o Ohio,
Indiana. Michigan, Wisconsin. Illinois. Minnesota, Iowa. Missouri. Kansas. Nebraska, South
.. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Wyoming Colorado, ™ Mexico,
Idaho, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbi Uaska l
katiows: Schkuhr, Kierlnr. pi. Ilhh. f. 132; Bngler, Pflanzenreich 4 ": 169 I 27, // L;
Brut & Brown, 111. PL f. 823; ed. 2. f. 900; Rob. & Pern, Man i 412; Rep. N. I Mus 1910: pi.
21. i. 1 Brytbea H: I if. lepson, PI. Calif V.J 11, d f; [epson, Man PI. I'l Calif i 171; Abrama,
III PI I'anf St./. 707; Am. Jour Sci. IV f. 106 I I. 107 ( 2 ". 109 (.6,7.

Carex stipata, variously called the prickly sedge, awl-fruited sedge, awlfruit sedge, owlfruit sedge, swamp sedge, sawbeak sedge, stalk-grain sedge and common fox sedge, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Carex, native to Canada, the United States, China, Korea, Japan, and Far Eastern Russia. It is a wetland obligate.