Japan Flora: Plant tufted, with short ascending extravaginal innovations; culms 20-30 cm. long, glabrous; leaf-blades 2-3 mm. wide, the basal sheaths brownish, nearly entire; spikes 3-5, approximate, the terminal staminate, 10 mm. long, the others pistillate, oblong-cylindric, 1-25 cm. long, the lowest one distinctly peduncled and remote from the others, some­times radical, the lower 1 or 2 bracts nearly leaflike and rather short-sheathing; pistillate scales obovate, castaneous, with a green midrib usually prolonged as a short mucro; perigynia nearly erect, 3 mm. long, obovate-oblong, sparsely puberulent or almost glabrous, with a 2-nerved midrib and a thickened, white, prominent stipe when mature, abruptly very short- beaked, with an emarginate tip; stigmas 3, short.  June-Aug. Alpine slopes; Hokkaido (Mount Yubaridake). Sakhalin.

var. verecunda Ohwi.  Rhizomes very abbreviated; spikes al! contiguous on the apical part of the culm, the lowest bract longer than the spike.  Alpine slopes; Honshu (centr. distr., including Iwashiro, Kozuke, and Shimotsuke Prov.); rather rare.