Fescue Sedge

Carex festucacea is often confused with 148. C. albolutescens; see note under that species.

Plants cespitose. Culms 45–100 cm; vegetative culms few, inconspicuous, usually fewer than 15 leaves, not strikingly 3-ranked, leaves clustered at apex. Leaves: sheaths green or with white intervenal areas, often adaxially white-hyaline, summits U-shaped or prolonged to 2 mm beyond collar; sheaths finely papillose or smooth; distal ligules 1–3 mm; blades 3–5 per fertile culm, 15–30 cm × 1–3.5 mm. Inflorescences arching or nodding, ± open, green to light brown, 2.5–6 cm × 4.5–11 mm; proximal internode 3–18 mm; 2d internode 3–13 mm; proximal bracts scalelike or with bristle tips shorter than inflorescences. Spikes 3–10, distinct, ellipsoid to globose, 6–16 × 5–6.5 mm, base acute to attenuate, apex rounded; terminal spike with conspicuous staminate base. Pistillate scales white-hyaline with white, green, or gold center, broadly lanceolate, 2.3–3.8 mm, shorter than and narrower than perigynia, apex acute. Anthers 1–2.1 mm. Perigynia (20–)25–60 in larger spikes, spreading, pale green to yellowish brown, conspicuously 5-veined or more abaxially, veinless or mostly indistinctly or basally 2–4(–6)-veined adaxially, orbiculate to elliptic, plano-convex, 2.5–4.2 × 1.5–2.3(–2.5) mm, 0.4–0.6 mm thick, nearly leathery, margin flat, including wing 0.3–0.6 mm wide, smooth; beak green or light brown at tip, flat, ciliate-serrulate, abaxial suture with conspicuous white-hyaline margin, distance from beak tip to achene 0.8–1.7(–2) mm. Achenes ovate, 1.2–1.8 × 1–1.3 mm, 0.3–0.4 mm thick; style sometimes abaxially-adaxially bent at base. 2n = 68, 70.

Ont.; Ala., Ark., Conn., Del., D.C., Ga., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Kans., Ky., La., Md., Mass., Minn., Miss., Mo., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Okla., Pa., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis.

Fruiting late spring–early summer.

Wet or seasonally wet places, poorly drained fields, open woods; 100–300m.

Carex festucacea Schkuhr; Wilid. Sp. PI. 4: 242. 1805
Carex straminea var. festucacea Gay, Ann. Sci. Nat. II. 10: 364. 1838. (Technically based on
C. festucacea Schkuhr.) Carex straminea var. festucacea Tuckerm. Enum. Caric. 18. 1843. (Based on C. festucacea Schkuhr.) Carex straminea var. (no. 1) B6ck. Linnaea 39: 117. 1875. (Based on C. festucacea Schkuhr.) ''Carex straminea Willd." L. H. Bailey, Proc. Am. Acad. 22: 149, in part. 1886.
1 tensely cespitose, from short-prolonged, black, fibrillose rootstocks, the culms slender to base but rather stiff, erect, 5-10 dm. high, sharply triangular and roughened on angles above, much exceeding leaves, the lower nodes not exposed, brownish-black at base, and clothed with the dried-up leaves of the previous year, the lower bladeless; leaves with welldeveloped blades 3-5 to a fertile culm, on lower third of culm, but not bunched, the blades flat, usually 7.5-30 cm. long, 1-5.5 mm. wide, thin, light-green, the sheaths tight, sparingly septate-nodulose, conspicuously hyaline ventrally, and prolonged upward beyond base of blade and continuous with ligule; inflorescence of 4-10 spikes, moniliform, 2.5-6 cm. long, the spikes gynaecandrous, rounded at apex, 6-16 mm. long, 5-6 mm. wide, with 10-20 appressed-ascending perigynia above, with rather conspicuous spreading-ascending tips, usually strongly clavate, with numerous staminate flowers at base; lowest bract occasionally somewhat developed, the others scale-like; scales ovate, acute, hyaline and tawny-tinged with green 3-nerved center, narrower and shorter than perigynia; perigynia plano-convex, green or in age straw-colored, 3.5 mm. long, 2 mm. wide, the body orbicular, thick, subcoriaceous, winged to base, serrulate above middle, strongly about 5-nerved dorsally over achene with an additional nerve in both margins, and similarly but less strongly nerved ventrally, sessile, rounded at base, abruptly contracted into a beak half to nearly length of body, the beak flat and strongly serrulate, tawny-tipped, obliquely cut dorsally, at length bidentulate; achenes lenticular, oblong-ovoid, 1.5 mm. long, nearly 1 mm. wide, light-brown, short-stipitate, obliquely apiculate; style slender, abruptly bent near base, jointed with achene, at length deciduous; stigmas two, light-yellowish-brown, slender.
Type locality: "Habitat in America boreali" (probably Pennsylvania).
Distribution: Open, often moist, woodlands, Georgia to Louisiana, and northward to Massachusetts, Indiana, and Iowa. (Specimens examined from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia. Virginia. West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi.)

Carex festucacea, or fescue sedge, is a species of sedge that lives in eastern North America. It has been described as "a soft, gray green, wisp, to 2', with narrow leaves and somewhat taller stems, topped by an interrupted spike, with lower spikelets, shaped a bit like an overflowing ice cream cone. The spike axis is often arched at the summit, but the alternating spikelets around the axis create a zig zag appearance. The seed sacs have a humped shoulder."