Carex salinaeformis

Carex salinaeformis Mackenzie, Bull. Torrey Club 36: 477. 1909
'■Carex salina var. minor Boott" W. Boott, in S. Wats. Bot. Calif. 2: 242. 1880. "Carex salina Wahl." Kiikenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4'»: 362. 1909. (As to Californian plant only.)
Loosely cespitose and long-stoloniferous, the stolons very slender, horizontal, yellowishbrown, the clumps small, the culms rather slender but stiff, 5-15 cm. high, obtusely triangular, smooth or nearly so, exceeded by the leaves, phyllopodic, light-brownish at base ; leaves with well-developed blades usually 5-8 to a fertile culm, not bunched at base, the blades flat, lightgreen or yellowish-green, thickish, 3-15 cm. long, 2-5 mm. wide, short-attenuate, roughened towards the apex, the sheaths rather loose, concave at mouth, the ligule as long as wide; staminate spike linear-obclavate, 8-16 mm. long, 2.5 mm. wide, shortor long-peduncled, the peduncle roughish, the scales oblong-obovate, obtuse, reddish-brown with conspicuous 3-nerved lighter center and hyaline margins; pistillate spikes 3 or 4, widely separate or the upper approximate, erect, the upper short-exsert-peduncled, the lower long-exsert-peduncled. the peduncles little roughened, the spikes oblong, 6-15 mm. long, 3-5 mm. wide, sometimes compound at base, closely-flowered, containing S-20 appressed-ascending perigynia in few rows; bracts leaf-like, the upper at least strongly exceeding culms, their sheaths conspicuous, 3-15 mm. long, concave at mouth; cladoprophyllum conspicuous, perigynium-like ; scales ovate, from rough-awBed (the lower) to obtuse (the upper), appressed, reddish-brown with broad, 3-ners'ed, green center and slightly hyaline margins, as wide as the perigynia but generally shorter; perig>'nia oblong-obovoid, flattened-suborbicular in cross-section, not inflated, 2.5-3.75 mm. long, 1.75 mm. wide, rather lightly nerved, subcoriaceous, densely minutely granular, yellowish-green or straw-colored, broadly substipitate, rounded and spongy at base, short-tapering and slightly constricted at apex but beakless, the orifice entire; achenes lenticular, closely enveloped, their faces suborbicular, 1.5 mm. long, nearly as wide, substipitate. yellowish-brown, densely puncticulate, abruptly slender-apiculate, jointed with the short slender style; stigmas two, dark-reddish-brown, long, slender.
Type locality; Mendocino City, California {Bolander 4702).
Distribution: Known only from near the Coast in Mendocino County. California. (Specimens examined from Mendocino County, California.)