Northern Long Sedge

South of central Virginia, Carex folliculata occurs only in the Appalachian mountains. Clumps of C. folliculata are striking because of the very broad, yellowish green leaf blades of their vegetative shoots.

Culms obtusely trigonous in cross section, (25–)40–175 cm, smooth. Leaves: ligules 2.5–10 mm, as wide as long to wider than long; blades yellowish green to light green, M-shaped to flat, 6–18(–21) mm wide, smooth or sometimes finely papillose and scabrous adaxially, especially distally; widest leaves of vegetative shoots 8–18(–21) mm wide. Inflorescences 15–85 cm; bract sheaths prolonged, apex truncate to convex; proximal 3–5 spikes pistillate (occasionally a few empty scales at apex), erect or the proximal nodding, ovoid to short cylindric. Pistillate scales lanceolate to narrowly ovate, mostly 2/3 as long as to exceeding perigynia, apex acuminate-awned. Anthers 3–5 mm. Perigynia ascending to spreading, yellowish green, 18–26-veined, slightly inflated, lanceolate, 10.3–15.6 × 1.8–3.3 mm, 4–7 times as long as wide, apex gradually tapered, bidentulate; beak absent. Achenes (3.2–)3.4–4(–4.5) × 1.5–2.3 mm, (1.7–)1.8–2.4 times as long as wide. 2n = 56.

St. Pierre and Miquelon; N.B., Nfld. and Labr., N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que.; Conn., Del., D.C., Ga., Ind., Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Penn., R.I., S.C., Tenn., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis.

Fruiting late spring–summer.

Wet forests, bogs, seeps, wet meadows, marsh edges, stream banks, lakeshores, in acidic, sandy, or peaty soils; 0–1800m.

Carex folliculata L. Sp. PL 978. 1753
Carex folliculacea Crantz, Inst. 1 : 405. 1766. (A renaming of C. folliculata L.)
Carex xanthophysa Wahl. Sv. Vet.-Acad. Nya Handl. 24: 152. 1803. (Type from North America.) Carex folliculata var. xanthophysa Muhl. Descr. Gram. 244. 1817. (Based on C. xanthophvsa Wahl.) Carex folliculata var. bispicata Peck, Ann. Rep. N. Y. State Mus. 49: 42. 1897. (Type from Tupper Lake, New York.)
Cespitose, the rootstocks short, thick, the clumps large, the culms 3-12 dm. high, stout at base, slender above, erect, exceeding the leaves but not the bracts, phyllopodic, obtusely triangular, smooth, light-brownish-tinged at base, and clothed with the dried-up leaves of the previous year; leaves with well-developed blades 4-10 to a fertile culm, septate-nodulose, the lower bunched, the upper regularly disposed, the blades thin but firm, yellowish-green at maturity, flat, usually 1-4 dm. long, 6-16 mm. wide, not long-pointed, roughened toward apex, the sheaths loose, enlarged upward, somewhat yellowish-tinged ventrally, convex or truncate at mouth, the ligule very short, much wider than long; staminate spike solitary, on a roughish peduncle about its own length, 12-25 mm. long, 3 mm. wide, the scales lanceolate to oblong-obovate, acute to awned, yellowish-brown with 3-nerved green center and hyaline margins ; lowest scale bract-like, conspicuous, from shorter to longer than the spike ; pistillate spikes 2-5, usually strongly separate, erect, peduncled, the peduncles nearly smooth, from short (the upper) to several times as long as the spikes (the lower), the spikes suborbicular, 1.5-2.5 cm. wide, rarely staminate at apex, closely flowered, containing 5-20 perigynia widely spreading and readily disarticulating at maturity; bracts strongly sheathing, leaf-like, their sheaths enlarged upward, the upper at least prolonged upward at mouth; scales ovate, awned or cuspidate, hyaline and often yellowish-brown-tinged, with conspicuous 3-5-nerved green center, narrower and from strongly shorter than to nearly as long as the perigynia, averaging three fourths as long; perigynia lanceolate, 10-15 mm. long, 3 mm. wide at base, suborbicular in cross-section, moderately inflated, submembranaceous, smooth, shining, yellowish-green, many-nerved, round-tapering and spongy at base, substipitate, tapering into a rough, bidentate beak nearly half the length of the body, the teeth slender, erect, 1 mm. long, rough within; achenes obovoid, 3.5 mm. long, 2 mm. wide, triangular with deeply concave sides and conspicuous blunt angles, loosely enveloped, yellowish, short-stipitate, continuous with the slender, persistent, little flexuous or flexuous style; stigmas 3, short, slender, dark-reddish-brown.
Type locality: "Habitat in Canada, Kalm."
Distribution: Swampy woods, acid soils, Newfoundland to Wisconsin, and southward to District of Columbia and Indiana, and in the mountains to North Carolina and Tennessee. (Specimens examined from Newfoundland, Miquelon, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee.)