Manystem Sedge

Plants cespitose, not rhizomatous. Culms 14–50 cm, terete, smooth distally. Leaves involute, 0.8–1.5 mm wide, usually shorter than culms. Spike with staminate portion separated from pistillate portion by short internode or sessile, 8–25 × 1.4–2.2 mm. Pistillate scales pale brown to green, proximal ones bractlike and long-awned. Staminate scales pale brown, apex obtuse. Anthers 1.2–5.2 mm. Perigynia (1–)2–6(–8), pale green to pale brown, faintly several-veined, 4.7–7.2 × 2.3–3.1 mm.

Calif., Oreg.

Fruiting mid May–late Jul.

Dry slopes and seasonally wet seepage areas in chaparral and open pine forests; 100–2200m.

Carex multicaulis L. H. Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 9: 118. 1884
"Carex Geyeri Boott" Boott, 111. Carex 42, in part. pi. 105. 1858.
"Carex phylloslachys C. A. Meyer" Dewey, in Torr. Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 231. 1859.
Densely cespitose, the rootstocks thick, woody, usually ven,short, dark-brown, fibrillose, the ctJms numerous, erect, stiff, ver>green, 2-6 dm. high, terete below, obtusely triangular above, striate, usually smooth, exceeding the ver>short leaves, brown at base, strongly aphyllopodic, the leaves of the previous year reduced to bladeless sheaths, the old culms persistent for two or three seasons; leaves clustered near base, usually 1 or 2 well-developed ones to a culm, the blades erect to spreading, short (1-S cm. long) at flowering time but when developed up to 3 dm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, rough on margins above, smoothish below, stiff, canaliculate or involute, the sheaths tight, hyaline ventrally, thin and truncate at mouth, the ligule veryshort; sterile shoots very few; spike solitary', androg>'nous, bractless (but with bractlike lower scales), the perig>-nia 1-6, the rachis straight, not dilated, overlapping to rather widely separated, erect-ascending, the staminate part sessile or short-peduncled, 7-25 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, closely 5-10-flowered, with the scales chartaceous, oblong-obovate, very obtuse, with green 3-nerved center, and verj' broad white-hyaline margins; pistillate scales enlarged at base, strongly white-hyaline-margined and partly enveloping perignia, the lower two bract-like and prolonged into cusps 1-4 cm. long and exceeding the head, the upper lanceolate, short-cuspidate or awned, often slightly fulvous-tinged; perigynia oblong-obovoid, 5-7 mm. long, the sides 2.5 mm. wide, triangular, glabrous, two-ribbed, finely and obscurely manynerved, pale-green, membranaceous, short-stipitate, tapering to a spongjbase, rounded at the apex and abruptly verjminutely beaked, the beak truncate and hyaline at mouth, entire or nearly so, minutely denticulate around the base; rachiUa linear, scabrous; achene broadly obovoid-oval, very sharply triangular with concave sides, completely filling the perig>'nium, 4.5 mm. long, 2.3 mm. wide, slightly subsdpitate, tapering at base, apiculate; style very short, conic, terete, thickish, jointed with achene, at length deciduous; stigmas three, long, slender, dark-reddish-brown .
Typb locality: Yosemite Valley, California (Torrey 54-1).
Distribution: Dry soil, from southern Oregon through northern and middle California, and into southern California along the Sierra Nevada. (Specimens examined from all parts of range.)

Carex multicaulis is a species of sedge known by the common name manystem sedge. It is native to California, western Nevada, and southern Oregon, where it grows in chaparral and open forest montane habitats.