17. Section Multiflorae (Kunth) Mack.

Plants monoecious, with short or poorly developed rhizomes, forming dense tufts or clumps. Vegetative stems usually poorly developed, reduced to basal clusters of leaves. Flowering stems erect, shorter than to longer than the leaves, sharply to bluntly trigonous, unwinged, firm, glabrous, often somewhat roughened on the angles near the tip, light brown to dark brown at the base. Leaves basal and on the basal half of the stems, glabrous, the basal leaves reduced to nearly bladeless sheaths. Leaf blades light green to less commonly yellowish green, the margins minutely roughened or toothed, flat or somewhat folded near the base. Leaf sheaths truncate or shallowly to strongly convex at the tip, the ventral side thin, papery, white or nearly so, often cross-wrinkled and breaking up at maturity, the lowermost sheath bases light brown to dark brown. Inflorescences compound, with numerous spikes, these sometimes difficult to differentiate, all similar, sessile or along short branches, and grouped into a dense, headlike spike or narrow panicle, the lowermost bracts hairlike, green, mostly shorter than the inflorescence, lacking a sheath. Spikes sessile, inconspicuously staminate toward the tip and pistillate toward the base, oblong-elliptic to nearly circular in outline, with 8 to numerous densely spaced perigynia, these ascending to mostly spreading at maturity. Staminate and pistillate scales similar, ovate, the tip pointed or awned, white or sometimes light yellowish brown tinged with a green or straw-colored midrib. Perigynia thin-walled, flattened ventrally and somewhat rounded dorsally, triangular to ovate or nearly circular in outline, tapered to a flattened beak with minute teeth along the margins and 2 narrow teeth at the tip, the base very short stalked below the fruit, the sides angled to narrowly winged, glabrous, shiny, green, turning yellowish brown to brown at maturity. Styles withering during fruit development, jointed to the main body of the fruit, which is not or minutely beaked at maturity. Stigmas 2. Fruits oblong-ovate to broadly elliptic in outline, biconvex and somewhat flattened in cross-section, yellowish brown to reddish brown, shiny. About 15 species, North America, South America, Asia.