124. Carex conjuncta Boott

Pl. 65 f–k; Map 240

Flowering stems 30–100 cm long, sharply trigonous and often narrowly winged, soft and easily crushed, often flattening upon drying. Leaf blades 2–40 cm long, 3–10 mm wide, green. Leaf sheaths often extended slightly beyond the attachment point of the leaf blade, convex at the tip, the dorsal side white with green veins or mottled green and white, also with scattered, short, dark green or brown cross-lines (these actually darkened cross-walls of the cells, clearly visible with magnification), the ventral side thin, papery, white with scattered red dots, cross-wrinkled and sometimes breaking up at maturity, the ligule longer than wide and U- or V-shaped. Inflorescences compound with relatively short basal branches, with 10–20 spikes. Pistillate scales 2.5–4.0 mm long, white or nearly so with a green or straw-colored midrib. Perigynia 3.5–4.5 mm long, 1.6–2.0 mm wide, ovate in outline, green, the tip tapered abruptly to a short beak about 1/2 as long as the main body, the base rounded, straw-colored, somewhat swollen with spongy tissue but continuous with the main body and not differentiated into a disklike structure, the ventral surface nerveless or with several short, faint nerves near the base of the main body, the dorsal surface with 3–5 strong nerves. Fruits 1.5–2.2 mm long. May–June.

Scattered nearly throughout Missouri, but less common in the Ozarks and nearly absent from the Mississippi Lowlands Division (northeastern U.S. west to Minnesota and Arkansas). Bottomland forests, bottomland prairies, moist depressions of upland prairies, and banks of streams and rivers; also in ditches.