Walter's Sedge

Southward from New Jersey, plants of Carex striata often have increasingly pubescent perigynia; northern, glabrous plants of that cline have been called C. striata var. brevis (A. A. Reznicek and P. M. Catling 1986b).

Exceptionally robust plants of Carex striata with glabrous perigynia may key to C. hyalinolepis, from which they can be distinguished by their broadly ovoid perigynia, smooth-margined pistillate scales, and green leaves.

Plants colonial; rhizomes long-creeping. Culms central, slender, trigonous, 40–90 cm, smooth, with marcescent remains of previous year’s leaves at base. Leaves: basal sheaths brownish and tattered on fertile culms, reddish purple on youngest culms, apex glabrous; ligules 1.8–12.5 mm; blades green, M-shaped, often ± septate-nodulose, 2.6–5(–6) mm wide, smooth abaxially, glabrous. Inflorescences 9–35(–45) cm; peduncle of terminal spike (2–)3.5–15 cm; rachis beyond the proximal pistillate spikes sharp-angled, finely scabrous; proximal 1–2 spikes pistillate, not or barely overlapping, ascending; distal spikes erect; terminal 1–3 spikes staminate. Pistillate scales lanceolate to ovate, acute to acuminate, sometimes ± smooth-awned to 1.1 mm, glabrous. Perigynia ascending, 14–22-veined, ovoid, 3.9–7 × 2–3.3 mm, glabrous or densely pubescent; beak 0.5–1.3 mm, bidentulate, teeth straight, 0.1–0.6 mm.

Ala., Del., Fla., Ga., Md., Mass., Miss., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., S.C., Va.

Fruiting Apr–Jul.

Open swamps, sedge meadows, bogs, boggy depressions, in acidic, often peaty soils; 0–100m.

Carex walteriana L. H. Bailey

Carex walteriana L. H. Bailey, Bull. Torrey Club 20: 429. 1893
Carex striata Michx. Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 174. 1803. (Type from Carolina.) Not C. striata Gilib.
1792. "Carex bullata Schk." Ell. Bot. S. C. & Ga. 2 : 556. 1824. "Carex polymorpha Muhl." Torr. Ann. Lye. N. Y. 3: 413. 1836. Carex striata var. Boott, 111. Carex 58. 1858. (Type from New Jersey.) Carex striata var. brevis L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1: 34. 1889. (Based on C. striata var.
Boott.) Carex Walteriana var. brevis L. H. Bailey, Bull. Torrey Club 20:429. 1893. (Based on C. striata
var. brevis L. H. Bailey.)
Loosely cespitose and freely long stoloniferous, in large beds, the stolons horizontal, tough, scaly, the culms aphyllopodic, 2-8 dm. high, slender, erect, sharply triangular, smooth or slightly roughened above, usually exceeded by the upper leaves, purplish-red at base, the basal sheaths breaking and becoming filamentose; sterile shoots with many leaves, short; leaves with well-developed blades 3-6 to a fertile culm, the lower somewhat clustered, the upper regularly disposed, the blades septate-nodulose, thickish, light-green, strongly channeled and keeled at the base, flat above, usually 1.5-4 dm. long, 1.5-5 mm. wide, long-attenuate, much roughened towards the apex; sheaths more or less yellowish-brown-tinged ventrally, concave at mouth, the ligule wider than long; staminate spikes 1 or 2, linear, 1.5-5 cm. long, 3-4.5 mm. wide, the scales oblong-obovate, obtusish, slightly ciliate, reddish-purple with lighter center and hyaline margins; pistillate spikes 1 or 2, erect, not or but shortly exsertpeduncled, strongly separate, narrowly oblong, 2-6 cm. long, 5-10 mm. wide, containing 10-30 appressed-ascending perigynia in few rows, closely flowered above, rather loosely flowered below; bracts leaf -like, exceeding culm, the sheaths 0.5-3.5 cm. long; scales ovate, long-acuminate, short-cuspidate, or acute, reddish-purple with very wide 3-nerved green center and white-hyaline margins, narrower than and from half as long to nearly as long as the perigynia; perigynia narrowly to broadly ovoid, suborbicular in cross-section, somewhat inflated, 4—6 mm. long, 2-2.5 mm. wide, many-nerved, the nerves impressed, slender, the walls coriaceous, glabrous or sparsely short-pubescent, rounded at base, short-stipitate, contracted into the broad bidentate beak about one third the length of the body, the teeth widely separate, erect, or somewhat spreading, 0.5 mm. long, thickish; achenes obovoid, triangular with concave sides, rather loosely enveloped, sessile, 1.75-2 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, conspicuously bentapiculate, jointed with the straight slender style; stigmas 3, slender, blackish.
Type locality (of C. striata Michx. on which C. Walteriana is based) : " Hab. in Carolina." Distribution: Sunny pine barren swamps near the coast, southeastern Massachusetts to