Pale Beak Sedge

Plants perennial, cespitose, 40–100 cm, base bulbous; rhizomes stoloniferous, short, wiry. Culms erect or excurved, linear, leafy, trigonous, slender. Leaves slightly to much exceeded by culm; blades ascending, narrowly linear, proximally flat, 1–3 mm wide, apex trigonous, tapering gradually, setaceous. Inflorescences terminal; spikelet single, terminal cluster of spikelets crowded, hemispheric, 2.5 cm wide; leafy bracts linear setaceous, much exceeding cluster. Spikelets whitish to tan, narrowly lanceoloid, (3.5–)4–5.5 mm, apex acuminate; fertile scales lanceolate, 3.5–4(–4.5) mm, apex narrowly acute, minutely awned or apiculate. Flowers: bristles vestigial or obsolete. Fruits 1 per spikelet, (1.9–)2–2.3 mm; body brown with pale center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid, 1.5–2 × 1.5 mm, margins flowing to tubercle; surfaces longitudinally finely striate; tubercle depressed triangular, 0.2–0.3(–0.4) mm.

Del., Md., N.J., N.Y., N.C., S.C., Va.

Fruiting late spring–fall.

Sands and peats of clearings in pine flatwoods, barrens, and savannas; 0–200m.

Phaeocephalum pallidum (M. A. Curtis) House; Rhynchospora curtisii Steudel 1855, not R. curtissii Britton 1903