Arctic Marsh Sedge

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.)