Common club rush

Description

Rhizomes short; stolons long creeping, slender. Culms erect, 50-120 cm tall, 3-10 mm thick, 3-angled to obtusely 3-angled just below inflorescence, glaucous. Leaves reduced to a bladeless or a shortly laminate sheath. Involucral bract 1, simulating a continuation of culm, 2-5(-10) cm, erect, rigid. Inflorescence a pseudolateral simple or compound anthela, 4-6 cm, with few to many spikelets; rays slender, smooth. Spikelets solitary, reddish brown, ovoid to oblong-ovoid, 6-12 � 1.5-3 mm, terete, densely many flowered, apex � acute. Glumes broadly elliptic, 3.5-4 � ca. 2 mm, membranous, margin broadly white hyaline and apically minutely ciliolate, apex obtuse to � notched and with a prominent green vein excurrent into a short mucro. Perianth bristles (3 or)4(or 5), rust-colored, ligulate-spatulate, � as long as nutlet, antrorsely scabrous, apically plumosely fringed. Stamens (2 or)3; anthers 1.5-2 mm; connective apex with a fimbriate appendage. Stigmas 3. Nutlet dark reddish brown to blackish, broadly obovoid, ca. 2 � 1.3 mm, biconvex, smooth. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep. 2n = 42, 78, 80, 84.