Carex abrupta Mack.

Carex abrupta Mackenzie, Bull. Torrey Club 43: 618. 1917
^ Carex nervina L. H. Bailey Parish. Bull. So. Calif. Acad. 5: 26. 1906. " Carex fesliva slricla L. H. Bailey " Parish. Bull. Soc. Calif. Acad. 5: 53. in part. 1906.
Densely cespitose, the rootstocks very short, brownish, fibrillose, the culms 4-6 dm. high, slender but erect, triangular, smooth, much exceeding the leaves, aphyllopodic, light-brownish at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year inconspicuous, short-bladed or bladeless; sterile shoots less numerous than fertile, with 4-6 erect leaves; fertile culms normally making growth in one year, with 3 or 4 will -developed leaves just above the base, the blades flat, light-green, thin, erect, 5 — 15 cm long, 1.5—2.5 mm. wide, the sheaths tight, hyaline and thin ventrally, prolonged beyond base of blade and continuous with ligule; Sterile shoots with similar leaves; spikes 4-8, very densely aggregated in a suborbicular head 9 17 mm. long and nearly as thick, the spikes gynaecandrous, with few staminate flowers, ovoid, 5-8 mm. long, 5-6 mm. wide, rounded at base and apex, tinperigynia 10 20 in * vera! rows, ascending;
bracts scale like; scales ovate, dull-reddishor chestnut brown with greenish Center and at length hyaline margins, the midvein OOt COnSpicUOl I and shorter than
perigynia; p eri g y nia plano-con vex , oblong-lanceolate or oblong-ovate, l -7i I nun. long, 1.5 mm. wide, m em br a naceous, soon light-brownish tinged, with several conspicuous alendei raised
Oil Ix.th faces, rather narrowly wing-margined to tinrounded bate, slight! sessile at base, the body serrulate on the margins above, abruptly contracted into a slendertipped beak one third to one fourth the length of the body, terete, dark, with smooth margins and conspicuously white-hyaline, bidentulate apex, strongly obliquely cut dorsally; achenes lenticular, oblong-ovoid, 1.8 mm. long, nearly 1 mm. wide, yellowish, substipitate, apiculate; style slender, straight, jointed with achene, at length deciduous; stigmas two, slender, lightreddish-brown, rather short.
Type locality: West Branch of North Fork of Feather River, near Stirling, Butte County, California (Heller 10820).
Distribution: Mountains of southern Oregon and northern California, and in California southward through the Sierra Nevada and in the higher southern mountains. (Specimens examined showing range as given.)