Stems 5-12 dm, smooth, solitary or few together from long, dark, scaly, sympodial rhizomes; basal sheaths persistent, brownish; lvs evidently septate-nodulose, 5-16 mm wide, the uppermost nonbracteal one with a sheath 5-20 cm; staminate spikes 1-5, 2-8 cm, on a collective peduncle 3-8 cm that is surpassed by or only slightly surpasses the uppermost pistillate spike; pistillate spikes 2-5, ascending, not crowded, their subtending bracts leafy, with a sheath 0.5-5 cm; pistillate scales 4.5-10.5 mm, slender, not awned; perigynia 20-75, ±spreading, smooth and shiny, strongly multinerved, 11-18 נ4-6 mm, with a short fat body and long conic beak 6-9 mm, this bidentate with smooth teeth; achene loosely enveloped, 2.2-2.6 נ2.7-3 mm, broadly stipitate, obpyramidal with rounded or truncate summit, concavely trigonous, with thickened angles; style persistent and becoming bony, straight or weakly contorted below. Swamps and wet woods, chiefly on the coastal plain; Del. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the Mississippi Valley to s. Ind.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.