Fescue Sedge

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.)