Japan Flora: Rhizomes long-creeping; culms few, 30-40 cm. long, acutely angled, scabrous above; leaf-blades grayish green, glaucescent, 2-3 mm. wide, the basal sheaths bladeless, reddish purple, fibrous; spikes 3 or 4, nearly approximate, the terminal gynecandrous or staminate or with a few pistillate flowers in the middle, the others pistillate, sessile, erect, oblong or short- cylindric, 1-2.5 cm. long, densely many-flowered, the bracts short; ｛났stillate scales narrowly ovate-lanceolate, dark brown­ish purple, abruptly short-awned; perigynia longer than and slightly broader than the scales, elliptic, 3 mm. long, glaucous- green, densely and minutely papillose, somewhat compressed, several-nerved, abruptly very short-beaked, shallowly 2-toothed at apex; stigmas 3, rather thick.  June-July. Boggy places.

Hokkaido; rare. s. Kuriles, Europe, N. America, and Aus­tralia.