Carex viridula

Carex viridula Michx. Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 170. 1803
Carex irregularis Schw. Ann. Lye. N. Y. 1 : 66. 1824. (Type from northwestern New Jersey.)
"Carex Oederi Retz." Schw. & Torr. Ann. Lye. N. Y. 1 : 334. 1825.
Edrilria viridula Raf. Good Book 26. 1840. (Based on Carex viridula Michx.)
Carex Urbanii Bock. Bot. Jahrb. 7: 280. 1886. (Type from Alaska.) Carex flava var. recterostrata L. H. Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 13: 84. 1888. (Type from Vancouver Island.) Carex flava var. viridula L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1:31. 1889. (Based on C. viridula Michx.) Carex Oederi var. putnila Fernald, Rhodora 8: 201, as to plant described. 1906. Carex Oederi var. viridula Kiikenth. in Engler Pflanzenreich 4 20 : 674. 1909. (Based on C. viridula
Michx.) Carex Oederi var. viridula f. recterostrata Kiikenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4 20 : 674. 1909. (Based
on C. flava var. recterostrata L. H. Bailey.)
Densely cespitose, the rootstock not at all prolonged, the clumps small, the culms 0.6-3 dm. high, stiff, erect, leafy, shorter than or exceeding the leaves, phyllopodic, obtusely triangular, smooth, light-brown and fibrillose at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year conspicuous; sterile shoots elongate, conspicuous ; leaves (not bracts) with well-developed blades usually 4-8 to a fertile culm, on the lower half, the lower clustered, the upper separate, not septate-nodulose, the blades dull-green, thickish, canaliculate, 0.5-2 dm. long, 1-3 mm. wide, long-attenuate, scarcely papillate but roughened at apex, the sheaths rather dull-white ventrally, thin but not markedly fragile, concave at mouth, the ligule as long as wide ; terminal spike normally staminate, sessile or short-peduncled, linear, 3-15 mm. long, 1.5-3 mm. wide, the scales oblongobovate, obtusish, reddish-brown with hyaline margins and 3-nerved center, often green when young; pistillate spikes 2-6, the upper closely aggregated, the lowermost from little to very widely separate, all erect, the upper nearly sessile, the others on usually little exserted smooth peduncles, the spikes oblong or globose-oblong, 5-10 mm. long, 4-7 mm. wide, containing 1530 spreading perigynia in several to many rows, not or but little deflexed ; bracts conspicuous, leaf-like, erect or occasionally spreading, many times exceeding head, the sheaths conspicuous, the lowermost 4-18 mm. long, concave and not chestnut-tinged at mouth; scales obovate, usually short-cuspidate, reddish with greenish 3-nerved center and narrow hyaline margins, narrower than and about half the length of the perigynia; perigynia 2-3 mm. long, 1.25 mm. wide, the body obovoid, not inflated, obtusely triangular, slightly flattened, membranaceous, puncticulate, yellowish-green, severalto many-ribbed, attenuate-tapering at base and substipitate, not obliquely attached, abruptly contracted into the smooth or subserrulate, straight, minutely bidentate beak about one third as long as the body, the tip reddish-tinged; achenes minute, obovoid, 1.25 mm. long, nearly 1 mm. wide, triangular with concave sides, closely enveloped, nearly filling body of perigynium, black and shining at maturity, substipitate, abruptly very short-apiculate, jointed with the straight slender style ; stigmas 3, reddish-brown, short, slender; anthers 1.75 mm. long, reddish -yellow.
Type locality: "Hab. in Canada."
Distribution: Seepy lake and river banks in calcareous districts, Greenland and Newfoundland to Alaska, and southward to northwestern New Jersey, Indiana, New Mexico, Utah, and northern California; also in Japan. (Specimens examined from Greenland, Newfoundland, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Pnnee Edward Island, New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Manitoba, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, northwestern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, including Vancouver and Queen Charlotte Islands, Alaska.)