New England Sedge

Carex novae-angliae Schw Ann. Lye. N. Y. 1: 67. 1824
Carex collecta Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. 11: 314. pi. N.f. 44. 1826. (Type from Worthington, Mziss.) Carex pilulifera f. americana Bock. Linnaea 41 : 216. 1877. (As to C. Novae-Angliae Schw. only.) Carex pilulifera var. Novae-Angliae Kurtz. Bot. Jahrb. 19: 419. 1894. (Technically based on C.
Novae-Angliae Schw.) Carex varia var. Novae-Angliae Kiikcnth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4-": 449. 1909. (Based on C.
Novae-Angliae Schw.)
Very loosely cespitose and more or less strongly stoloniferous, the stolons very slender, scaly, the culms 0.5-4 dm. high, very slender, sharply triangular, rough above, weak but erect, shorter than the leaves of the sterile culms, phyllopodic, reddish-purple and fibrillose at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year several, conspicuous, long-bladed; sterile shoots elongate, lateral, strongly aphyUopodic, the well-developed leaves clustered near the top; fertile culms bearing one to several leaves of the year, with well-developed blades, on lower third, the blades 0.5-15 cm. long, exceeded by the culms, 0.75-1.5 mm. wide, thin, flaccid, pale-green, soft, ascending or erect, roughened on the margins and towards the apex, the sheaths tight, concave at mouth, rarely breaking and becoming conspicuously fibrillose, the ligule short; leaves of sterile culms with longer (1-2.5 dm.) blades; staminate spike solitary, erect, sessile or short-peduncled, very slender, narrowly linear or filiform, 4—16 mm. long, 0.5-1 mm. wide, the scales oblong-lanceolate, closely appressed, long-acuminate to obtuse, reddish-brown or straw-colored with hyaline margins; pistillate spikes usually 2 or 3, none radical, more or less widely separated, all erect, the uppermost sessile, the second sessile or short-peduncled, the third short-peduncled, 3-6 mm. long, 3 mm. wide, oblong or suborbicular, containing 2-10 ascending perig>'nia; bracts not sheathing, green and but little colored at base, leaflet-like, the lowest from nearly equaling to exceeding the culms, the upper much smaller; scales ovate, abruptly short-cuspidate, not ciliate, usually wider than but somewhat exceeded by the perignia, hyaline, often strongly tinged with reddish-brown, the midvein green, sharply defined; perig>'nia narrowly obovoid, obtusely triangular, 2.5 mm. long, the body oblong-obovoid, 1.25 mm. long, 0.75 mm. wide, 2-ridged but otherwise nerveless, sparsely appressed-pubescent, membranaceous, light-green or somewhat yellowish-brown-tinged, entirely filled by achene, short-stipitate, tapering to a spongy base 0.5 mm. long, very abruptly contracted into a minute beak 0.25-0.5 mm. long, with bidentate orifice; achenes oblongobovoid, triangular with convex sides and blunt greenish angles, dark-brownish, 1.5 mm. long, 0.9 mm. wide, tapering at base, minutely apiculate; style short, slightly thickened at base, jointed with achene, deciduous; stigmas three, slender, dark-reddish-brown, rather long.
Type loc.m.ity: "New England"; and, more definitely (Ann. Lye. N. Y. 1: 328): "On Saddle Mountain, Williamstown, Massachusetts, about 3000 feet above the sea."
Distribution: Woodlands, Newfoundland to Wisconsin, and locally southward at higher altitudes to northwestern Connecticut and Pennsylvania. (Specimens examined from Newfoundland, St. Pierre, Quebec, Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia. New Brunswick. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, northwestern Connecticut, New York, northern Pennsylvania, Ontario, Wisconsin.)