dcsimg

Comprehensive Description

provided by North American Flora
Carex saltuensis L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1 : 7. 1889
Carex vaginata var. altocaulis Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. II. 41: 227. 1866. (Type from Bergen, New York.)
"Carex vaginata Tauscher" Boott, 111. Carex 148, as to American plant. 1867.
Carex altocaulis Britton; Britt. & Brown, 111. Fl. 1: 326. 1896. (Based on C. vaginata var. altocaulis Dewey.)
Carex sparsiflora subsp. altocaulis "Britton" Kiikenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4 20 : 513. 1909. (Based on C. vaginata var. altocaulis Dewey.)
Clumps small, very slenderly long-stoloniferous, the stolons horizontal, yellowish-brown, not scaly, the culms arising one to several together, slender, erect or ascending, 1.5-8 dm. high, triangular, smooth or nearly so, strongly exceeding the leaves, phyllopodic, brownishtinged at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year conspicuous; sterile shoots short; leaves with well-developed blades numerous, bunched at the base of the culms, the blades erect to widely spreading, dark-green or light-green or even glaucous-green, 0.5-4 dm. long, 1.5-5 mm. wide, flat or channeled at base, thickish or flaccid, roughened towards the apex, those of the sterile culms the largest; culm-leaves much reduced, their sheaths long, slightly yellowi? ! -brown-tinged ventrally and soon ruptured, concave at mouth, the ligule longer than wide; terminal spikes staminate, erect, on a smooth peduncle 0.5-8 cm. long, linear, or linear-obclavate, 1-2 cm. long, 2-4 mm. wide, the scales oblong-obovate, obtuse to acute or the upper mucronate, purplish-brown, the margins hyaline, the center 3-nerved, yellowish or greenish; pistillate spikes 2 or 3. widely separate or the upper two approximate, erect or more or less spreading, the lower exserted on long, slender, smooth peduncles, the upper on shorter-exserted peduncles, the spikes linear, 8-20 mm. long, 3-5 mm. wide, loosely 3-20flowered, with spreading or ascending perigynia in very few rows; bracts with sheaths long (usually 1.5-3 cm.), slightly enlarged upw r ards, convex at mouth, their blades rudimentary or very short, much shorter than the inflorescence, little if at all purplish-tinged; scales broadly ovate, obtuse or acute, or sometimes mucronate, brownish-purple with very narrow hyaline margins and conspicuous 3-nerved green center, narrower and usually much shorter than the perigynia; perigynia with obovoid body, slightly inflated, suborbiculartriangular in cross-section, 3.5-5 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, 2-keeled and indistinctly several-nerved when young, distinctly so at maturity, yellowish-green or yellowish-brown, submembranaceous, puncticulate, substipitate, round-tapering to the base, tapering at apex into a short-cylindric, thick, excurved beak 1 mm. long, the orifice hyaline, usually purplish-tinged, sometimes slightly ciliate, obliquely cleft, at length strongly bidentate; achenes obovoid, nearly filling the perigynium, triangular with concave sides and blunt angles, 2.5-3 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, sessile, abruptly slenderly apiculate and jointed with the straight slender style; stigmas normally three, long, slender, blackish.
Type locality: Carex saltuensis may be regarded as based primarily on Carex vaginata var. altocaulis Dewey, the type locality of which is "Bergen, 20 miles west of Rochester," New York.
Distribution: Boggy thickets and woods, in calcareous districts, Labrador and Newfoundland to Yukon, and southward to northern New England, northern New York, upper Michigan, northern Minnesota, and British Columbia. (Specimens examined from Newfoundland, Quebec, Maine, Vermont, northern New York, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Mackenzie. Minnesota, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Keewatin.)
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bibliographic citation
Kenneth Kent Mackenzie. 1935. (POALES); CYPERACEAE; CARICEAE. North American flora. vol 18(5). New York Botanical Garden, New York, NY
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