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Holm's Rocky Mountain Sedge

Carex scopulorum Holm

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provided by eFloras
Carex scopulorum is the common species of sect. Phacocystis in subalpine, seasonally wet meadows in the western mountains. It is replaced on the western slope of the Cascade range by C. spectabilis, a member of sect. Scitae. Where sympatric with C. aquatilis, C. scopulorum occurs in drier portions of the habitat.

Carex scopulorum is frequently confused with members of sect. Racemosae because of the similarity in habitat, size, inflorescence dimensions, and perigynium shape; it is distinguished by the two stigmas and flattened achenes. Carex scopulorum is probably most closely related to C. bigelowii, based on the similarity in vegetative morphology, hypostomic leaves, perigynia characteristics (absence of veins), and chromosome numbers.

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Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, 63110 USA
bibliographic citation
Flora of North America Vol. 23: 381, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401 in eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden. Accessed Nov 12, 2008.
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Flora of North America @ eFloras.org
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Flora of North America Editorial Committee
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Description

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Plants not cespitose. Culms acutely angled, 10–90 cm, glabrous. Leaves: basal sheaths red-brown; sheath apex U-shaped; blades hypostomic, glabrous, 3–6 mm wide. Inflorescences: proximal bract shorter than inflorescence, 0.5–3 mm wide. Spikes erect; proximal 2–4 spikes pistillate, 1–2.5 cm × 3–5 mm, base cuneate; terminal 1–2 spikes staminate. Pistillate scales purple-brown, equaling perigynia, apex obtuse or acute, awnless. Perigynia ascending, pale brown with red-brown spots on apical 1/2, veinless, somewhat flattened, loosely enclosing achenes, ellipsoid or obovoid, 2–4 × 1.2–2.3 mm, dull, apex obtuse or acute, papillose; beak red-brown, 0.2–0.3 mm. Achenes not constricted, dull.
license
cc-by-nc-sa-3.0
copyright
Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Boulevard, St. Louis, MO, 63110 USA
bibliographic citation
Flora of North America Vol. 23: 381, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401 in eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden. Accessed Nov 12, 2008.
source
Flora of North America @ eFloras.org
editor
Flora of North America Editorial Committee
project
eFloras.org
original
visit source
partner site
eFloras

Comprehensive Description

provided by North American Flora
Carex scopulorum Holm, Am. Jour. Sci. IV 14: 422; 421./. 1-6. 1902.
Carex Tolmiei var. subsessilis L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1 : 47. 1889. (As to Colorado specimens only.)
Strongly stolonifcrous, the culms one to few together, the stolons stout, ascending or
horizontal, purplish-red, scaly, the culms stiffly erect, 1-4 dm. high, stout, papillate, exceeding the leaves, sharply triangular, smooth or roughened above, strongly phyllopodic, brownish or dull-purplish-brown-tinged at base, the dried-up leaves of the previous year numerous and conspicuous, all the leaves of the year blade-bearing; sterile shoots aphyllopodic; I well-developed blades usually 8-15 to a fertile culm, 3-5 of the flowering year, the resl of the previous year, clustered near the base, slightly septate-nodulose, the blades erect, thickish, flat with revolute margins, light-green, papillate, 0.5-3 dm. long, 3-7 mm. wide, short-tapering, roughened at apex only, the sheaths light-yellowish-brown-tinged ventrally, not hispidulous dorsally, the ligule as wide as long; staminate spike solitary, sessile or more or less peduncled, linear or linear-clavate, 1-2.5 cm. long, 2.5-4 mm. wide, often partly pistillate, the scales oblong-obovate, obtuse to acute, black, usually slightly hyaline at apex, the midvein whitish, usually prominent; pistillate spikes 2-6, usually 2-4, closely aggregated or the lowest occasionally separate, erect, the upper sessile or nearly so, the lower short-peduncled, oblong, 1-2.5 cm. long, 6-7 mm. wide, the uppermost often somewhat androgynous, closely manyflowered, the perigynia squarrose-spreading in many rows; lower bracts squamiform, much shorter than the culm, sheathless, conspicuously black-biauriculate; upper bracts reduced, scale-like; scales obovate, usually obtuse, black, sometimes with lighter midrib and very narrow hyaline margins, from nearly the length of to much shorter than but narrower than the perigynia; perigynia strongly biconvex and turgid, orbicular or broadly obovoid, 2.5-3.5 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, 2-ribbed (the marginal), otherwise nerveless, papillose, membranaceous, pale at base, purplish-black-spotted or blotched above, rounded to a nearly sessile or substipitate base, not or very sparingly remotely serrulate above, apiculate, the beak 0.2-0.5 mm. long, entire, purplish-black, often abruptly bent; achenes normally lenticular, suborbicular or broadly obovoid, 1.25 mm. long, nearly as wide, nearly filling lower three quarters of perigynium, light-brown, sessile, minutely apiculate, jointed with the slender short-exserted style; stigmas 2, slender, whitish or becoming yellowish-brown.
Type locality: "We found this species very abundant in the"region of Clear Creek Canon (Colo.), also near Leadville, (Colo.); it grows in thickets of willows along creeks at an elevation of between 3600 and 3900 met." (Holm).
Distribution: High mountains, from Colorado and Wyoming to Nevada and the Sierra Nevada of California (Tulare County). (Specimens examined from Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Nevada, California.)
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bibliographic citation
Kenneth Kent Mackenzie. 1935. (POALES); CYPERACEAE; CARICEAE. North American flora. vol 18(6). New York Botanical Garden, New York, NY
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