Fewseeded Bog Sedge

Erect perennial, 7-30 cm. Rhizome with short stolons. Stem terete, smooth. Leaves to half of stem length; sheaths 5-25 mm, dark brown, frequently with red-brown flecks, margin of scarious side straight or slightly concave; ligule c. 0.5 mm, arch almost straight; blades 0.4-0.8 mm wide, terete with groove on adaxial side, smooth, apex obtuse. Inflorescence 6-10 mm, a single androgynous spike. Bracts 0. Male part of inflorescence 4-6 mm, with less than 10 flowers; male glumes c. 3.5 mm, caducous, cymbiform, truncate, light-brown. Female part of inflorescence with 4-11 flowers; female glumes 2-2.5 x 1.1-1.5 mm, caducous, widely oblong, apex rounded, margins scarious, brown; utricles 3.9-5 x 0.7-0.9 mm, with a suberous c. 0.5 mm stipe, finally reflexed, long fusiform, terete, smooth, rachilla extends 5 mm through ostiole, beak c. 1.5 mm, cylindrical, ostiole margins scarious. Stigmas 3. Nut 2.1-2.3 x 0.5-0.6 mm, cylindrical, very finely rugulose, greenish brown.

Kashmir, Nepal, arctic-alpine N. Hemisphere.

Distribution: Circum-boreal species with gap in Siberia; C. European mts., Caucasus, NW Iran; C Asian mts. from Dzungarskiy Alatau southwards and from C Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir eastwards to Nepal.

4100-4600 m

Fl. Per.: June- August.

Wet meadows, along streams etc.

Carex microglochin Wahl. Sv. Vet.-Akad. Nya Handl 24: 140. 1803.
Carex aristala Clairv. Man. 209. 1811. (Type from Switzerland.)
Carex pauciflora microglochin Poir. in Lam. Encvc. Suppl. 3: 247. 1813. (Based on C. microglochin
Wahl.) Uncinia microglochin Spreng. Syst. 3: 830. 1826. (Based on Carex microglochin Wahl.) Uncinia europaea Gay, Flora 10: 26. 1827. (Based on Carex microglochin Wahl.) Carex Lyoni Boott, in Hook. Fl. Bor. Am. 2: 209. pi. 208. 1839. (Type from Rocky Mountains,
Alberta.) Caricinella microglochin St. -Lag. in Cariot, Etude Fl. ed. 8. 2: 281. 1889. (Based on Carex microglochin Wahl.)
Culms few together, from very slender elongate rootstocks, 0.2-2.5 dm. high, erect, slender but stiff, exceeding the leaves, phyllopodic, very obtusely triangular, very smooth, brownish at base ; leaves with well-developed blades 4-8 to a fertile culm, clustered toward the base, not septate-nodulose, the blades stiff, involute, light-green, erect -ascending, usually 3-10 cm. long, about 0.5 mm. wide, smooth throughout, the tip blunt, the sheaths tight, hyaline ventrally, low-concave at mouth, the ligule much wider than long; spike solitary, usually 7-14 mm. long, 6-9 mm. wide, androgynous, containing a few staminate flowers above and 3-12 perigynia below these, at first ascending but soon reflexed and easily detached; bracts absent; staminate scales few (5 or 6), oblong-obovate, acutish or obtuse, light-chestnut-brown throughout or with hyaline margins and lighter center; pistillate scales similar, obtuse, wider than and about half as long as the perigynia, often with hyaline margin and lighter midrib, very early deciduous; perigynia subulate or linear-lanceolate, 4-5 mm. long, barely 1 mm. wide, not inflated, suborbicular in cross-section, membranaceous, light-green or brownish-green or straw-colored, obscurely many-striate, spongy and very obliquely substipitate, round-truncate at base, long-tapering at apex, the smooth beak and body not differentiated, the orifice conspicuously hyaline, obliquely truncate, filled by the projecting rachilla; achenes narrowly oblong-obovoid, 2.5 mm. long, 0.5-0.75 mm. wide, triangular with sides concave below, convex or flat above, closely enveloped, occupying lower half of perigynium, yellowish-brown, substipitate, abruptly contracted into and continuous with the long, slender, straight, not exserted style; stigmas 3, slender, light-reddish-brown, short; rachilla slender, projecting 1-2 mm.
Type locality: "Hab. in lateribus irriguis alpium lapponicarum septentrionalium."
Distribution: Moist sunny places, calcareous districts, Greenland to Alaska, and southward to Quebec and the high mountains of central Colorado. Widely distributed in arctic-alpine Eurasia. (Specimens examined from Greenland, Newfoundland, Quebec, Alberta, Colorado, subarctic America, Alaska.)

Carex microglochin, called the fewseeded bog sedge and bristle sedge, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Carex, native to temperate and subarctic North America, South America, Europe and Asia. It is uncertain which hemisphere it originated on before dispersing to the other.