Carex hystricina

Carex hystricina Muhl.; Wilid. Sp. PL 4: 282. 1805
Carex erinacea Muhl. ; Schkuhr, Riedgr. Nachtr. 69. 1806. (As synonym, type from Pennsylvania.)
Not C. erinacea Cav. 1799. Carex Cooleyi Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. 48: 144. pi. DD,f. 105. 1845. (Type from Macomb County,
Michigan.) Carex hystricina var. Cooleyi Wood, Bot. & Fl. ed. 1871. 378. 1871. (Based by inference on C.
Cooleyi Dewey). Carex Pseudo-Cyperus X hystricina Dudley, Bull. Cornell Univ. 2 : 118. 1886. (From Ithaca, New
York.) Carex hystricina var. Dudleyi L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1: 54. 1889. (Type from Ithaca,
New York.)
Cespitose and stoloniferous, the rootstocks short, stout, the stolons few, long, horizontal, very slender, the culms 1.5-10 dm. high, erect, slender, exceeded by the bracts and often by the upper leaves, sharply triangular and more or less roughened above, the central phyllopodic, with the dried-up leaves of the previous year very conspicuous, the lateral aphyllopodic and purple-tinged at base, the basal sheaths breaking and becoming more or less filamentose; sterile shoots elongate, conspicuous; leaves with well-developed blades 3-7 to a fertile culm, not clustered, septate-nodulose, the blades thin, flaccid, green, flat with slightly revolute margins, usually 1-3 dm. long, 2-10 mm. wide, rough on the margins and toward the apex, the sheaths white-hyaline and somewhat yellowish-tinged ventrally, concave at mouth, the ligule wider than or about as long; staminate spike solitary, slender-peduncled, usually with a conspicuous bract some distance below, linear, 1-5 cm. long, 2.5-4 mm. wide, the scales obovate or oblanceolate, subciliate, rough-awned, light-reddish-brown with 3-nerved green center; pistillate spikes 1-4, approximate to strongly separate, the lower nodding on long rough peduncles, the upper erect on short peduncles, the spikes oblong or oblong-cylindric, 1-6 cm. long, 10-15 mm. wide, densely flowered, containing numerous spreading perigynia in many rows; bracts leaf -like, the lowest little or occasionally strongly sheathing, the upper somewhat reduced; scales with small obovate or oblanceolate bodies, ciliate-serrulate above, lightreddish-brown with 3-nerved green center excurrent as a long rough awn, the bodies much narrower and several times shorter than the perigynia; perigynia narrowly ovoid, 5-7 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, suborbicular in cross-section, inflated, membranaceous, glabrous, shining, light-green or greenish-straw-colored at maturity, closely many-ribbed, rounded at base and short-stipitate, tapering into a smooth, deeply bidentate, slender beak about 2 mm. long, the slender teeth rigid, erect, 0.5 mm. long; achenes small, obovoid, 1.75 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, triangular with sides concave below and blunt thickened angles, loosely enveloped, brownish, granular, nearly sessile, abruptly contracted above and continuous with the slender, slightly flexuous, persistent style; stigmas 3, dull-reddish-brown, short.
Type locality: "Habitat in Pensylvania;" in Schkuhr, "Habitat in humidis Pennsylvaniae."
Distribution: Swamps and wet meadows, in calcareous districts, New Brunswick and Quebec to Washington, and southward to Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, Arizona, and Trinity County, California; a local species southwestward; erroneously recorded from Georgia and Newfoundland. (Specimens examined from Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California, Washington, Oregon.)