Sartwell's Sedge

Carex sartwellii is an important wetland species in portions of the Midwest and West, but becomes increasingly uncommon and local eastward. It forms large, loose clones, but can be easily overlooked because flowering and fruiting are sometimes uncommon. Once seen, the tall, tristichous vegetative culms scattered along the rhizome are distinctive.

Culms trigonous, scabrous-angled distally, (30–)40–120 cm; vegetative culms somewhat taller. Leaves: basal sheaths brown; sheaths glabrous, inner band green, veined, apex hyaline, prolonged 1–4.5 mm; ligules 2.2–8 mm; blades 2.5–4.6 mm wide. Inflorescences nearly cylindric, except near apex, 2.5–7(–9) cm; spikes ascending, ovate, 3.2–11 × 1.1–7 mm, basal spikes slightly more prominent than middle spikes. Pistillate scales pale brown to straw colored at maturity, hyaline margins, ovate, apex acute to acuminate, glabrous. Staminate scales pale brown to straw colored, narrowly ovate, apex acute, glabrous. Perigynia (2.5–)2.8–4.1(–4.6) × 1.3–2 mm; beak 0.4–1(–1.2) mm. Achenes brown.

Alta., B.C., Man., N.W.T., Ont., Que., Sask.; Colo., Idaho, Ill., Ind., Iowa, Mich., Minn., Mo., Mont., Nebr., N.Y., N.Dak., Ohio, Pa., S.Dak., Wis., Wyo.

Fruiting Jun–Jul.

Fens, wet prairies, sedge meadows, marshes, wet, open thickets, open swamps, stream, pond, and lakeshores, ditches, often in shallow water; 0–2100m.

Carex sartwellii Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. 43 : 90 pi. CCJ. 95. 1842.
"Carex intermedia Gooden." Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. II. 4: 343. 1847. "Carex disticha Huds." Boott, 111. Carex 125. (pi. 410, in part). 1862. Carex disticha var. Sartwellii Dewey, Am. Jour. Sci. II. 41: 330. 1866. (Based on C. Sarlwcllii
Dewey.) Carex Sartwellii var. occidentalis L. H. Bailey; Macoun, Cat. Can. PI. 5; 374, in part. 1890. (As to
Kamloops specitnen only.) "Carex Sartwelliana Dewey" B. D. Jackson. Ind. Kew. 1: 438. 1893. (Error for C. Sartwellii
Dewey.)
Rootstocks long-creeping, slender but tough, black, fibrillose, the culms 4-8 dm. high, arising singly or in small clumps, stiff, sharply triangular above, bluntly so below, roughened on the angles, especially above, much exceeding the leaves, strongly aphyllopodic, brown at base; leaves with well-developed blades about 3 to a culm, all on its lower third or half, widely separated, the lower nodes exposed, the blades erect-ascending, 1.5-3 dm. long, flat, light-green, 2.5-4 mm. wide, long-tapering, roughened on the margins and towards the apex, the sheaths loosely enveloping the stem, green-striate ventrally to base of blade, shortprolonged, thin and hyaline and truncate at mouth, the margins adnate; sterile shoots conspicuous, the leaves bunched at apex; spikes numerous, densely aggregated into an elongate oblong head 3-6 cm. long and about 1 cm. thick, the upper spikes hardly distinguishable, the lower distinguishable but little separated, androgynous, broadly ovoid, 6-9 mm. long, 4-6 mm. wide, the larger containing 15-20 appressed perigynia, the staminate flowers apical, usually conspicuous; most of the middle and upper spikes entirely staminate or sometimes only the middle ones; bracts broadly ovate, hyaline, conspicuous in the young heads, the lower short-cuspidate; scales ovate-triangular, slightly shorter and slightly narrower than the perigynia, dull-reddish-brown with green midvein and white-hyaline margins, obtuse to short-cuspidate; perigynia thick-plano-convex, ovate-orbicular, 2.5-3 mm. long, 1.51.75 mm. wide, straw-colored or light-brownish, substipitate, rounded at base, membranaceous, sharp-edged to base, serrulate above middle, the body not spongy at base, finely manynerved dorsally, and flat and finely severalto many-nerved ventrally, abruptly contracted into a serrulate beak about one fourth the length of the body, dorsally cleft, at length bidentulate, the orifice minutely hyaline; achenes lenticular, broadly oblong-obovoid, 1.5 mm. long, less than 1 mm. wide, substipitate, apiculate; style slender, short, straight, enlarged at base, jointed with achene; stigmas two, slender, elongate, light-reddish-brown.
Typb locality: Junius, Seneca County, New York (Dr. " S. P." [H . P.] Sartwell).
Distribution : Marshes and bogs in calcareous regions, Ontario and western New York to British Columbia, and southward to Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and Colorado. (Specimens examined from New York, Ontario, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, British Columbia.)