Arctic Marsh Sedge

Carex holostoma has most likely been overlooked and has a more continuous range than indicated.

Plants loosely cespitose, long-rhizomatous. Culms 10–30 cm, distally finely scabrous. Leaves 1.5–3 mm wide. Inflorescences: proximal bract shorter than or equaling inflorescences; spikes contiguous, overlapping, short-oblong or cylindric, 3–8 × 2–2.5 mm; proximal spikes sometimes erect, distinct, separate, short-pendunculate; lateral 1–2(–3) spikes pistillate, of similar length; terminal spike staminate, spikes can be hidden by larger, overtopping lateral spikes. Pistillate scales dark brown or black, margins hyaline, ovate, shorter or equaling, as broad as perigynia, midvein lighter colored than body, conspicuous, sometimes raised, prominent, mucronate. Perigynia ascending, brown, obscurely veined, elliptic or obovate, 2–2.5 × 1.25–1.75 mm, apex beakless or abruptly beaked, papillose; beak to 0.2 mm, truncate, smooth. Achenes nearly filling body of perigynia. 2n = 60.

Greenland; Nfld. and Labr., N.W.T., Nunavut, Que., Yukon; Alaska; arctic Eurasia.

Fruiting Jul–Sep.

Lakeshores, meadows, fens, bogs; 0–500m.

Carex alpina Liljeblad var. holostoma (Drejer) L. H. Bailey

Carex holostoma Drejer, Nat. Tidssk. 3: 449. 1841
Carex alpina var. holostoma L. H. Bailey, Proc. Am. Acad. 22: 76. 1886. (Based on C. holostoma Drejer.)
Loosely cespitose and stoloniferous, the stolons long and conspicuous, slender, horizontal, the culms 1-2 dm. high, central, sharply triangular, somewhat stiffly erect, smooth, shorter than or exceeded by the leaves, phyllopodic, purplish-red-tinged at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year conspicuous, leaves with well-developed blades 6-10 to a fertile culm, bunched towards the base, not septate-nodulose, the blades 5-20 cm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, light-green, thin, erect, flat with revolute margins, long-attenuate, little roughened except at apex, the sheaths thin and yellowish-brown-tinged ventrally, concave at mouth, the ligule longer than wide; terminal spike generally staminate, sessile, inconspicuous, overtopped and largely hidden by the contiguous pistillate spikes, linear, 3-8 mm. long, 2 mm. wide, fewflowered, the scales ovate or obovate, acute or obtuse, purplish-black with inconspicuous lighter midvein and conspicuously white-hyaline margins above; pistillate spikes 1-3 (usually 2), erect, sessile or short-peduncled, aggregated or the lower more or less remote and more or less strongly peduncled, linear, linear-oblong, or short-oblong, 6-10 mm. long, 3-4 mm. wide, closely flowered, the perigynia 10-30, appressed-ascending in several rows; bracts sheathless, black-auricled, the upper reduced and squamiform, that of the remote spike (when present) leaflet-like and shorter or longer than the inflorescence; scales small, 1.5-2.5 mm. long, broadly ovate, broadly obovate, or suborbicular, obtuse or the upper acute, purplish-black with obscure lighter midvein and narrow white-hyaline apex, as wide (at base) but shorter than the mature perigynia; perigynia obovoid, slightly inflated, obtusely suborbicular-triangular in cross-section, 2-2.5 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, membranaceous, densely granular, not serrulate, very obscurely few-nerved, straw-colored below, purplish-black-tinged above, tapering at base, sessile or nearly so, truncately or abruptly contracted into a very minute nearly entire beak 0.1 mm. long; achenes obovoid, 1.5 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, nearly filling perigynium, triangular with concave sides, granular, yellowish-brown, sessile, abruptly apiculate, jointed with the very short, black, more or less exserted style; stigmas 3, slender, blackish, short.
Type locality: "In locis humidis ad radices montium Groenlandiae occidentalis (69°-71° L. B.) legit J. Vahl." (Fl. Dan. pi. 2428.)
Distribution: Keewatin, West Coast of Greenland between 68° 21' and 70° 20'; extreme northern Norway and Lapland. (Specimens examined from Chesterfield Inlet, Keew r atin, Greenland.)