Hop Sedge

Occasional specimens have been seen that appear to be sterile hybrids of Carex lupulina with C. retrorsa or C. lurida.

Plants loosely cespitose or not, short-rhizomatous. Culms solitary or not, erect, 20–100(–130) cm. Leaves 4–8; basal sheaths reddish to brownish; sheath of distal leaf (1.3–)1.7–10(–25) cm; ligules triangular, 3.5–18 mm; blades 15–64 cm × 4–15 mm. Inflorescences 4–40 cm; peduncles of proximal spikes 0.5–20 cm, basal 2 peduncles 1–20 cm apart of terminal spike 0.5–6(–7) cm, shorter than or exceeding distal pistillate spike by 2 cm or less; bracts leafy, sheaths 0.5–15 cm, blades 13–55 cm × 3–11 mm. Spikes: proximal pistillate spikes (1–)2–5, distal spikes usually ± crowded, ascending, densely (4–)8–80-flowered, ovoid to cylindric, 1.5–6.5 × 1.3–3 cm; terminal staminate spikes 1(–2), 1.5–8.5 cm × 1–5 mm. Pistillate scales 1–7-veined, lanceolate to lanceolate-ovate, 6–15 × 1–2.7 mm, apex acute to awned, awns rough, to 6 mm. Anthers 3, 3–5.5 mm. Perigynia ascending, strongly 13–22-veined, ± stipitate, lance-ovoid, 11–19 × 3–6 mm, shiny, glabrous; beak conic, 6–10 mm. Achenes stipitate, rhomboid, flat to concave faces, angles smoothly thickened, not pointed or nobbed, 3–4(–4.5) × 1.7–2.6(–2.8) mm; style same texture as achene.

N.B., N.S., Ont., Que.; Ala., Ark., Conn., D.C., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Kans., Ky., La., Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Miss., Mo., Nebr., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Okla., Pa., R.I., Tenn., Tex., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis.

Fruiting late spring–summer.

Wet, deciduous or mixed swamp forests, forest openings, wet meadows; 0–700m.

Carex lupulina Muhl.; Wilid. Sp. PI. 4: 266. 1805
Carex lupulina var. pedunculata A. Gray; Beck, Bot. U. S. 438. 1833. (Type from Lake Erie,
New York.) Carex lupulina var. androgyna Wood, Bot. & Fl. 376. 1870. (Types from eastern United States.) •'Carex lurida Wahl." L. H. Bailey, Proc. Am. Acad. 22: 63. 1886. Carex lupulina var. longipedunculata Sart.; Dudley, Bull, Cornell Univ. 2: 119. 1886. (Type from
central New York.) Carex gigantea var. lupulina Farwell, Ann. Rep. Comm. Parks Detroit 11: 50. 1900. (Based on
C. lupulina Muhl.) Carex lupulina var. albomarginata Sherff, Bull. Torrey Club 38: 482. pi. 26. 1911. (Type from
Flint, Michigan.) Carex gigantea var. lupulina f. pedunculata Farwell, Rhodora 23: 87. 1921. (Based on C. lupulina
var. pedunculata A. Gray.)
Cespitose, from short stout rootstocks, sending forth long, slender, scaly, horizontal stolons, the culms 3-12 dm. high, stout, much exceeded by the upper leaves and bracts, phyllopodic, sharply triangular, smooth or nearly so, light-brown or somewhat purplish-tinged at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year conspicuous; loaves with well-developed blades usually 4-8 to a fertile culm, strongly septate-nodulose, regularly placed, even the lower little clustered, the blades flat, thin but firm, dull-green, usually 2-6 dm. long, 4-15 mm. wide, very rough towards the apex, especially on the margins, the sheaths white-hyaline ventrally, shortprolonged at mouth, the ligule conspicuous, longer than wide; stamina te spike solitary, narrowly linear, from nearly sessile to long-peduncled, 2-10 cm. long, 3-5 mm. wide, the scales linear-obovate or lanceolate, acuminate to strongly aristate, straw-colored with strongly several-nerved green center and hyaline margins; lowest scale bractlike, somewhat shorter than to much exceeding the spike; pistillate spikes 2-5, occasionally staminate above, oblong, or occasionally oblong-cylindric, 2-8 cm. long, 2-3.5 cm. wide, erect, closely aggregated, or the lowest from little to strongly separate, the upper nearly sessile, the lower on smooth peduncles from shorter than to several times the length of the densely flowered spikes, the perigynia 2075, ascending in about 6-10 rows; bracts leaf -like, several to many times exceeding the culms, the lower at least strongly sheathing, the sheaths strongly prolonged and acutely high-convex at mouth; scales lanceolate, rough-awned or acuminate, straw-colored with strongly severalnerved green center and hyaline margins, much narrower than and mostly much shorter than the perigynia; perigynia narrowly ovoid, 10-20 mm. long, 4-7 mm. wide, suborbicular in crosssection, much inflated, subcoriaceous, smooth, green or at length brownish-yellow, strongly about 20-ribbed, round-truncate at base, sessile or nearly so, tapering into a conic, usually more or less rough, bidentate beak nearly half the length of the whole, the teeth 0.75-2 mm. long, slender, stiff, erect to strongly spreading, smooth within; achenes ovoid-rhombic, much longer than wide, 4 mm. long, 2.5-3 mm. wide, loosely enveloped, triangular with shallow concave sides, the angles knobless or somewhat thickened, tapering at base and broadly stipitate, tapering into and continuous with the persistent, slender, very abruptly bent and twisted style; stigmas 3, short, slender, blackish.
Type locality: "Habitat in Pensylvania."
Distribution : Swamps and ditches, calcareous or neutral soils, Nova Scotia to western Ontario and Minnesota, and southward to Florida and Texas. (Specimens examined from Quebec, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Okla-