23. Carex crawei Dewey

Pl. 35 f–i; Map 136

Plants with long-creeping rhizomes, forming loose colonies of tufts. Flowering stems 10–30 cm long, usually stiffly erect, mostly longer than the leaves, bluntly trigonous, mostly smooth, brownish tinged at the base. Leaf blades 10–25 cm long, 1–3(–4) mm wide, thick, often arched outward or curled. Leaf sheaths shallowly convex at the tip, the ventral side thin, papery, and white, the ligule longer than wide, the lowermost sheaths brownish tinged at the base. Staminate spike 10–25 mm long, with a long, roughened stalk, overtopping the uppermost pistillate spike and usually also the bracts. Staminate scales 3.6–4.2 mm long, rounded to bluntly pointed at the tip. Pistillate spikes 2–4, loosely spaced nearly the entire length of the stem, 10–30 mm long, 4–6 mm wide, sessile or with short, roughened stalks. Pistillate scales 1.2–2.8 mm long, broadly ovate, mostly sharply pointed at the tip, reddish brown with green midrib and tan to white margins. Perigynia ascending, 2.5–3.5 mm long, ovate to elliptic in outline, tapered abruptly to a very short, inconspicuous beak that is truncate at the tip, the surface with finely raised nerves, green to yellowish green. Fruits 1.7–2.1 mm long, the minute beak erect or slightly bent. 2n=38. April–June.

Scattered in the Ozark and Ozark Border Divisions, except for the southeasternmost counties (northern U.S. south to Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wyoming; Canada). Calcareous glades.

This species might be confused with the superficially similar C. meadii (section Paniceae), with which it sometimes co-occurs. In C. meadii, the 1–3 pistillate spikes tend to have longer stalks and are mostly along the apical half of the stems, and the leaf sheaths are concave at the tips. Also the perigynia are pale green to greenish white with more strongly raised nerves and have a curved or bent beak. In C. crawei, the perigynia sometimes are dotted with small, yellowish resin glands, which are lacking in C. meadii.