Shortstem Sedge

Carex brevicaulis Mackenzie, Bull. Torrey Club 40: 547. 1913
In large clumps, the rootstocks stout, woody, short-creeping, short-stoloniferous with ascending stolons, the culms 3-15 cm. high, slender but stiff and erect, exceeded by the leaves, sharply triangular, very rough on the angles, phyllopodic, reddish-brown and more or less fibrillose at base; sterile shoots aphyllopodic; leaves with well-developed blades 6-10 to a fertile culm, clustered near base, the blades thin but firm, deep-green, channeled or nearly fiat towards tip, the margins slightly revolute, usually 2.5-7.5 cm. long, 1.5-3.5 mm. wide, roughened above and towards the apex, long-attenuate; leaf-blades of sterile culms 5-12 cm. long; sheaths glabrous dorsally, little or not at all breaking or filamentose ventrally, the ligule much wider than long; terminal spike staminate, few to many-flowered, shortto long-peduncled, 6-18 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, the scales oblong-obovate, acute to short-cuspidate, reddishbrown with light-colored 3-nerved center and white-hyaline, non-ciliate margins; lateral spikes 2-4, pistillate, 4-6 mm. long and nearly as wide, the uppermost sessile near the base of the staminate, the second non-basal one (if present) sessile and somewhat remote, the others far remote, basal, slender-peduncled, the maturing perigynia 1-6, erect-ascending, the upper flowers usually not developing; bract of lowermost non-basal spike leaflet-like, shorter than to somewhat exceeding culm, widened at base into reddish-brown auricles with hyaline margin; scales ovate, acute to short-cuspidate, reddish-brown with light-colored 3-nerved center and white-hyaline, non-ciliate margins, narrower and shorter than the mature perigynia; perigynia about 4 mm. long, loosely short-pubescent, more or less yellowish-brown-tinged, membranaceous, the body nearly orbicular in cross-section, 2.25 mm. wide, 2-keeled, long-stipitate, abruptly contracted into a beak 1 mm. long, slender, serrulate, rather shallowly bidentate; achenes triangular-globose, the sides strongly convex with prominent angles, closely enveloped, 2 mm. wide and slightly longer, slightly stipitate, abruptly rounded at base and apex, jointed with the short, slender style, slightly enlarged at base; stigmas three, slender.
Type locality: Yaquina Bay, Oregon {Howell Z994).
Distribution: Dry soil near the coast, from British Columbia southward to Santa Cruz County, California. (Specimens examined from British Columbia (including Vancouver Island), Washington, Oregon, California.)