Yosemite Sedge

Carex sartwelliana Olney, Proc. Am. Acad. 7: 396. 1868
Carex yosemitana L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1: 8. 1889. (Change of name only.)
Carex Congdonii L. H. Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 21: 6. 1896. (Type from Tuolumne County, California.)
Cespitose from stout rootstocks with short-ascending stolons, the culms rather stout, rather stiff, 3-9 dm. high, phyllopodic, much exceeding leaves, sharply triangular and slightly roughened above, brownish or purplish-red and not fibrillose at base, the basal sheaths not breaking and becoming filamentose, the sterile shoots elongate, the leaves clustered towards apex; leaves with well-developed blades 8-15 to a fertile culm, clustered on lower third, softly pubescent, not septate-nodulose, the blades light-green, not rigid, flat with revolute margins or channeled towards the base, usually 1-3.5 dm. long, 3-7 mm. wide, strongly roughened towards the attenuate apex; sheaths strongly cinnamon-brown-tinged and red-dotted ventrally, concave at mouth, the ligule longer than wide; terminal spike staminate, or occasionally with a few perigynia, more or less peduncled, linear or linear-clavate, 12-30 mm. long, 4.5-6 mm. wide, the scales narrowly oblong-obovate, conspicuously white-ciliate, obtuse, purplish-brown with straw-colored center and narrow hyaline margins; pistillate spikes 3 or 4, approximate or somewhat separate, erect, sessile or slightly peduncled, oblong-cylindric, 12-40 mm. long, 4.5-6 mm. wide, containing 40-200 appressed perigynia, closely packed in several to many rows; lowest bract leaf -like, very lightly sheathing, about equaling inflorescence, the upper bracts much reduced; scales ovate or ovate-lanceolate, white-ciliate and appressed-hairy, awned, mucronate, or acute, purplish-brown with white-hyaline margins and conspicuous green 3-nerved center, somewhat narrower and from shorter to longer than the perigynia; perigynia 2.5-3.5 mm. long, 1.25-1.75 mm. wide, greenish or in age straw-colored, submembranaceous, white-pilose, the body obovoid or oblong-obovoid, triangular, not inflated, tworidged and obscurely nerved, short-tapering at base, short-stipitate, abruptly beaked, the beak 1 mm. long, slender, conic, hyaline-tipped, obliquely cut, at length minutely bidentate; achenes broadly obovoid, 1.5 mm. long, 1-1.5 mm. wide, closely enveloped, triangular with concave sides and blunt angles, substipitate, yellowish, granular, abruptly short-apiculate, jointed with the short, rather slender style; stigmas 3, dull reddish-brown, slender.
Type locality: "California, Yosemite Valley, alt. 6000 feet, Brewer 1636; Bolander 6221."
Distribution: Mountains of California; Sierra Nevada from Tuolumne to Tulare counties and in the San Jacinto mountains. (Specimens examined showing above range.)