52. Carex lupuliformis Sartwell
ex Dewey (hoplike
sedge)
Pl. 44 e–h; Map 168
Plants
often with long-creeping, dark brown rhizomes, forming clumps or scattered
tufts. Vegetative stems generally poorly developed or absent. Flowering
stems 1 to few per tuft, 40–120 cm long, smooth, light
brown to somewhat reddish tinged at the base. Leaf blades
30–80 cm long, 6–13 mm wide, dull green. Leaf sheaths slightly prolonged
past the insertion point of the blade, truncate or slightly convex at the tip,
the ligule longer than wide and V-shaped, the
uppermost leaf (not a bract subtending a spike) with the sheath 3–21 cm long. Staminate spike 20–100 mm long (rarely a second, shorter, staminate
spike at the base of the terminal one), 2–5 mm wide, short- to long-stalked,
but the stalk shorter than to about as long as the uppermost pistillate spike. Staminate scales 6–11 mm long,
narrowly oblanceolate to lanceolate,
tapered to a pointed or awned tip, straw-colored with
a green midrib and white margins. Pistillate spikes
2–6, 20–80 mm long, 15–30 mm wide, ascending, ovate to broadly elliptic in
outline, with 8–75 perigynia. Pistillate
scales 6–13 mm long, lanceolate, tapered to a pointed
or rough-awned tip, straw-colored with a green midrib
and white margins. Perigynia 12–19 mm long, mostly
ascending, narrowly ovate in outline, green or sometimes yellowish brown at
maturity, dull, glabrous, the tip with the beak 6–9 mm long, the base rounded.
Styles strongly contorted near the base. Fruits with the main body 3.0–4.5 mm
long, longer than wide or sometimes about as long as wide, diamond-shaped in
outline, widest at the middle, the angles pointed into nipplelike
knobs, the sides strongly concave. 2n=60. July–September.
Widely
scattered and relatively uncommon in eastern and northern Missouri
(eastern U.S. and adjacent Canada west to Minnesota
and Texas).
Swamps, bottomland forests, and margins of ponds, sometimes
emergent aquatics.