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Published In: Synopsis Plantarum Glumacearum 2: 234. 1855. (Syn. Pl. Glumac.) Name publication detailView in BotanicusView in Biodiversity Heritage Library
 

Project Name Data (Last Modified On 9/1/2009)
Acceptance : Accepted
Project Data     (Last Modified On 7/9/2009)
Status: Native

 

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26. Carex amphibola Steud.

Pl. 36 e–g; Map 139

Plants mostly without noticeable rhizomes, forming dense tufts or rarely loose clumps, green to light green or yellowish green. Flowering stems 15–80 cm long, erect to spreading, brown or dark reddish purple at the base. Leaf blades 1–50 cm long, 3–7 mm wide, flat. Leaf sheaths glabrous, the tip truncate or shallowly concave, the lowermost, nearly bladeless sheaths brown or dark reddish purple. Spikes 3–5 per stem, the bracts of the uppermost pistillate spikes longer than the inflorescence. Staminate spike 7–35 mm long, sessile or short-stalked, the stalk smooth. Staminate scales 3.6–4.9 mm long, narrowly oblong to narrowly ovate, white to light brown with green midrib, occasionally with sparse, red spots. Pistillate spikes 5–25 mm long, 4.5–9.5 mm wide, the uppermost sessile or short-stalked, the lowermost short- to more commonly long-stalked, the stalks smooth, ascending, with 3–18 strongly overlapping perigynia, these several-ranked, in a spiral pattern around the axis. Pistillate scales 2.0–5.3 mm long, the lowermost ones with the bodies as long as or longer than the associated perigynia, ovate to broadly ovate, the tip pointed and with a short to long, rough-margined awn, white with green midrib, sometimes with reddish purple spots or streaks. Perigynia 4.2–5.2 mm long, 1.5–2.2 mm wide, 2.5–3.0 times as long as wide, ascending, narrowly elliptic to obovate in outline, the tip pointed, without a beak, slightly tapered to a broad, more or less rounded base, bluntly triangular in cross-section. Fruits 3.0–3.7 mm long, the main body (excluding beak and stalklike base) 1.9–2.4 mm long, the beak 0.3–0.6 mm long, straight. 2n=54, 56. April–July.

Scattered nearly throughout Missouri, but uncommon in the Glaciated and Unglaciated Plains Divisions (eastern U.S. west to Illinois and Texas). Bottomland forests and margins of streams and rivers; less commonly in mesic upland forests and upland prairies.

Steyermark (1963) treated the C. amphibola complex as a single species with four varieties and discussed taxonomic problems within the group that had led some botanists to recognize a greater number of species for the region. Naczi (1992, 1993) has studied the group intensively and described several new species as segregates from C. amphibola. Thus, the complex is treated here as consisting of four closely related species, C. amphibola in the strict sense, C. corrugata, C. grisea, and C. planispicata. Readers are advised, however, that these species are defined differently than were the four varieties accepted by Steyermark (1963), and there is not a one-to-one correspondence between them. For further discussion, see the treatments of C. corrugata and C. grisea.

 
 


 

 
 
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