Geyer's Sedge

Carex geyeri Boott, Trans. Linn. Soc. 20: 118. 1846 Loosely cespitose, the rootstocks thick, woody, elongate, brown, scaly, the culms erect, slender but stiff, deep-green, 1-4 dm. high, sharply triangular, very rough above, somewhat exceeding or shorter than the leaves, reddish-brown at base and strongly aphyllopodic, the leaves of the previous year reduced to bladeless sheaths, the old culms not long-persistent; leaves on lower half of culm, not bunched, usually about 2 well-developed ones to a culm, the blades very short at flowering time, later elongating, erect, 10-30 cm. long, 2-3.5 mm. wide, flat or canaliculate, deep-green, thick, leathen,-, very rough on the margins, the sheaths tight, hyaline ventrally, thin and truncate at mouth, the ligule very short; sterile shoots numerous, elongate; spike solitary', androgynous, bractless, the rachis straight, scarcely dilated, the perig>nia 1-3, overlapping or more or less separate, erect-ascending, the staminate part shortpeduncled, linear-oblong, 5-25 mm. long, 1.5-3 mm. wide, S-I5-flowered, the staminate scales oblong-obovate, obtusish, ciliate at apex, densely imbricate, round, thin, striate, fulvoustinged with hyaline margins and apex, the midvein prominent below only, the pistillate scales usually exceeding, wider than, and largely concealing and half enveloping the perigynia, fulvous, with broad white-hyaline margins, sometimes irregularly denticulate towards the apex, the lower short-awned, the upper obtusish or acutish; perigynia oblong-obovoid, 6 mm. long, the sides 2.5 mm. wide, triangular, glabrous, 2-ribbed, otherwise nerveless, greenishstraw-colored or brownish-tinged, membranaceous, short-stipitate, tapering to a spongy base, rounded at the apex and abruptly very minutely beaked, the beak truncate and hyaline at mouth, entire or nearly so, minutely denticulate around the base; rachilla slender, scabrous; achene broadly oval-obovoid, very sharply triangular, with concave sides, completely filling the perigynium, 4.5 mm. long, 2.3 mm. wide, tapering and slightly substipitate at base, strongly apiculate; style very short, terete, conic, thickish, jointed with achene, at length deciduous; stigmas three, long, slender, dark-reddish-brown.
Type locality': "Hah. In decHvitatibus aridis Montiura Saxosorum, Americae septentrionalis, C. A. Geyer 332 (Herb. Hooker)."
Distribution: Dry mountain-sides and open woods, Alberta and Colorado to British Columbia and northern California. (Specimens examined from Alberta. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. Utah. Idaho. British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, northern California.)