Coastal Sand Sedge

Carex incurviformis Mackenzie, in Rydb Fl. Rocky Mts. 120. 1917.
Rootstocks slender, brownish or blackish, long-creeping, scaly, the culms few together, low, 2-6 cm. high, erect or curved, slender, smooth, sharply triangular above, shorter than the leaves, brownish-tinged and fibrillose at base, the old leaves not conspicuous, the lower bladeless; leaves 4-8 to a culm, clustered near the base, thick, stiff, light-green, 1-4 cm. long, 0.751.5 ram. wide, flattened at base, involute above, the sheaths hyaline, truncate at mouth, the ligule very short; head globose-ovoid, 6-9 mm. long, 5-8 mm. thick, bractless, the spikes few, androgynous, densely aggregated and scarcely distinguishable, the staminate flowers inconspicuous, the perigynia few, ascending or in age spreading; .scales lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, acuminate or acute, shorter and somewhat narrower than the perigynia, brown, with narrow hyaline margins and sharply defined lighter midvein or center; perigynia thick-plano-convex, oblong-oblanceolate, 3.25 mm. long, 1.25 ram. wide, very narrowly sharp-edged ventrally to base, the margins not serrulate, shining, membranaceous, scarcely inflated, with many slender but conspicuous impressed nerves on both sides, the upper part empty, dark-chestnut-brown at maturity, slenderly short-stipitate, roundtapering at base, contracted into a sraooth beak scarcely one third the length of the body, obliquely cleft dorsally, at length bidentulate. minutely hyaline at the orifice; achenes lenticular, quadrate-orbicular, yellowish-brown, 1.5 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, very short-stipitate, truncatcly apiculate, loosely enveloped; style short, slender, scarcely enlarged at base, jointed with the achene, deciduous; stigmas two, slender, elongate, light-brown.
Type locality: National Park, Banff, Alberta (Macoun. July 31, 1891).
Distribution: Sunny places in calcareous districts, on alpine peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in Alberta and British Columbia. (Specimens examined from Alberta and British Columbia.)