Carex scabrella Wahlenb.

Carex scabrella Wahl. Sv. Vet.-Akad. Nya Handl 24: 149. 1803.
Carex laxaSvi.; Wahl. Sv. Vet.-Akad. Nya Handl. 24: 149. 1803. (As synonym; type from Jamaica.) Not C. laxa Wahl. 1803.
Densely cespitose, from stout short rootstocks, the culms very slender, weak and decumbent, phyllopodic, 0.5-5 dm. high, smooth on angles, much exceeded by leaves, brown and strongly long-fibrillose at base; leaves with well-developed blades 5-10 to a fertile culm, mostly clustered near the base, the blades usually 20-35 cm. long, 0.5-1.5 mm. wide, erect, rather thin, light-green, flat with revolute margins, often channeled above, var>'ing from strongly to slightly roughened towards the long-attenuate apex; sheaths tight, the ligule very short; spikes androgynous in about 5 erect, ovoid, spike-like panicles, the upper 1 or 2 panicles sessile or nearly so and approximate, the next 2 strongly separate on very slender, roughish peduncles. 2-3 times the length of the panicles, the lowermost nearly basal and on very long peduncles; panicles 6-12 mm. long, 5-7 mm. wide, each with hispid rhachis, and consisting of 3 or 4 small ovoid sessile spikes with 3-6 ascending perigynia beneath and about as many inconspicuous staminate flowers above; peduncles of panicles subtended at base by a small perig-nium-like cladoprophyllum, their bracts leaflet-like, exceeding inflorescence, from little to strongly sheathing; scales ovate, acutish to awned, slightly scabrous, reddish-brown with lighter several-nerved center and narrowly hyaline margins, rather narrower than and half the length of the perigynia; perigynia with obovoid, sharply triangular body, not inflated, the whole 3-4 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, hispid-pubescent, prominently many-ribbed, subcoriaceous, puncticulate, straw-colored, tapering to base, abruptly narrowed at apex into a straight or slightly curved beak about 1 mm. long, the apex bidentate, with erect teeth; achenes broadly obovoid, triangular with concave sides and blunt angles, stipitate, closely enveloped, the body 1.5 mm. long, 1 mm. wide, light-straw-colored, brownish-black at maturity, granular, straight or sometimes bent-apiculate, jointed with the short, rather slender style; stigmas three, reddish-brown, slender.
Type locality; "Hab. in raonttbus Jamaicae; Swartz."
Distribution: Dry woodlands, West Indies and Guatemala. (Specimens examined from Jamaica, Cuba. Haiti. Santo Domingo, Guatemala.)