Carex duriuscula subsp. duriuscula

Carex eleocharis L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1: 6. 1889
"Carex stenophylla Wahl." Boott, in Hook. Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 211. 1839.
Rootstocks very slender, 1-2 mm. thick, long-creeping, brown, scaly and fibrUlose, the culms low, 2.5-20 cm. high, slender but stiff, growing in small clumps containing one to several culms, obtusely angled, smooth, brownish at base, from shorter than to exceeding the leaves; leaves with well-developed blades usually 1-4 to a culm, on the lower third, the blades from erect to recurved-spreading, light-green, stiff, short on the fertile culms and 3-15 cm. long on the sterile shoots, 1-1.5 mm. wide at base and canaliculate-flattened, much narrower and involute above, and slightly roughened towards the apex, the sheaths tight, very thin ventrally, truncate at mouth, the ligule dark-margined, wider than long; spikes several, densely aggregated in a solitary ovoid to linear terminal head 5-20 mm. long, 5-10 mm. thick, none of the spikes readily distinguishable; each spike ovoid or orbicular, bearing the conspicuous, cylindrically arranged staminate flowers above and the few (1-8) appressedascending perigynia below; staminate flowers conspicuous at flowering time, the upper spikes largely staminate; bracts ovate, cuspidate, and about the length of the lower spike or rudimentary; scales ovate-orbicular, chestnut or reddish-brown with a white-hyaline margin, conspicuous towards apex, varying from rounded at apex and abruptly short-cuspidate to obtusish, acutish, and tapering-short-cuspidate, rather wider than and about the length of the perigynia; perigynia plano-convex, ovate-orbicular, 2.5-3 mm. long, 1.5-1.75 mm. wide, straw-colored at first, black at maturity, coriaceous, flattish and nerveless or obscurely fewnerved at base ventrally, high-convex and fewto many-striate dorsally, the margins slightly elevated ventrally and serrulate at base of beak, substipitate, rounded at base, contracted into a serrulate beak one third to one fourth the length of the body, at length bidentulate, obliquely cleft dorsally, the orifice hyaline; achenes lenticular, orbicular-obovatc, 1.75 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, sessile, apiculate; style short, slender, jointed with achene; stigmas two, slender, light-reddish-brown. Typb locality: Saskatchewan plains.
Distribution: In dry sunny places on the plains, prairies, and foothills of the interior, from Manitoba to Yukon, and southward to Iowa, New Mexico, Utah, and eastern Oregon. (Specimens examined from northwestern Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon, Montana. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, eastern Oregon.)