Japan Flora: Stems elongate and long-creeping, loosely leafy; branches ascending, 10-30 cm. long, usually flabellately ramulose; branchlets much flattened, green, 2-grooved above, 3-4 mm. wide; leaves of sterile branches rather loosely disposed in 4 rows, small, long-decur­rent and adnate to the axis, spinelike at tip, the lateral ones flattened, the free part 1-1.5 mm. long, ascending to subcrect, the dorsal leaves subulate, appressed, adnate most of the length on inner side to the axis, convex on back, the ventral leaves al­most wholly adnate, reduced to a minute appressed subulate tip; peduncles erect, 8-13 cm. long, the leaves loose, linear, ascending, often hyaline at the tip; spikes 2-5 on each peduncle, 2-3 cm. long, pedicelled; bracts deltoid-cordate, with a linear hyaline short tip, erose and membranous on margin. Mountains.

Hokkaido, Honshu (centr. and n. distr.) Ku­riles, Sakhalin, Korea, China, Himalayas, Siberia to Europe, and N. America.

Russia Flora: Plant up to 30 cm tall. Creeping stems long, shallowly submerged in the substrate, with sparse, greatly reduced phyllodia. Vertical branches ascending, dichotomously branched and arranged in one plane in a fan-like manner, green (lighter colored on the ventral side), flattened, 3-4 mm wide. Phyllodia heterogeneous, opposite, arranged in 4 rows, decurrent, appressed to the axis, awn-like pointed. Dorsal phyllodia fused with the axis, with the apex standing away, cylindrical, overlapping each other, 4 mm long; lateral ones - widened, highly fused with the axis, standing away in the upper part, 4.5 mm long, with a hyaline apex, somewhat curling to the ventral side; ventral ones - reduced, up to 1 mm long, obliquely spreading. Strobiloids 2-3 cm long, numbering 2-5, on stalks 8-13 cm long, with sparse linear reduced phyllodia with hyaline apex. Sporophylloids deltoid-cordate, 2.5-3 mm long, with irregularly torn wide light membranous margin and short hyaline apex. Sporangium weakly reniform, almost semicircular, 0.7-0.8 mm long.

Apparently in all regions, except Chukotka, Anadyr, Anadyr-Penzhina, Kolyma, Commander Islands (Fig. 7). — Light and well-drained areas in larch and pine forests, in lowlands and forest belt, avoids calcareous soils and rocks. VIII-IX. — General distribution: European part; Scandinavia, Atlantic and Central Europe, Mediterranean, Mongolia, Japan-China (PRC, DPRK), North America.