Carex glareosa Wahlenb.
Kungl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Handl. nov. ser., 24: 146. 1803.
Nomenclatural section used by Flora of North America project subgenus Vignea, sect. Glareosae G. Don
Carex glareosa var. amphigena Fern., including C. marina auct. non Dewey
Carex amphigena (Fern.) Mackenzie
Carex bipartita All. var. amphigena (Fern.) Polunin
Carex bipartita var. glareosa (Schkuhr ex Wahlenb.) Polunin
Carex glareosa subsp. marina sensu A. Löve and D. Löve
Carex marina Dew.
Plants caespitose. Plants more than 15 cm high (usually); (8–)12–25(–30) cm high. Roots pallid-brown. Ground level or underground stems not developed horizontally or vertically. Scales present (not conspicuous). Aerial stems decumbent (slender, flexuous); filiform (0.5–1 mm in diameter); triangular in cross section; glabrous. Leaves mostly basal. Sheaths brown, or reddish (or straw coloured). Ligules present; 0.1–0.2 mm long. Blades straight; linear; flat, or strongly keeled, or caniculate; stomata on both adaxial and abaxial surfaces; glabrous, or scabrous (glaucous, gray-green).
Flowering stems conspicuously taller than the leaves. Leaf or reduced bract closely associated with the base of the inflorescence present, or absent; reduced, or scale-like; shorter than the apex of the inflorescence; 0.25–1 cm long; with sheath shorter than the blade. Inflorescence spicate; linear, or ovate; (0.8–)1–2(–2.3) cm long; 5–10 mm wide; multispicate; 2–3(–4) spikes (close together, usually overlapping, brown); lateral spikes sessile (or almost so; entirely female). Individual spike(s) ascending, or divergent. Terminal spike staminate at the base (club-shaped, or oblong). Cladoprophyll absent. Staminate flowers inconspicuous. Floral scales shorter than the perigynium in fruit (usually); brown, or pale grey; with margins, and sometimes mid-vein paler in colour than the adjacent area of the scale; ovate; 2.3–2.7 mm long; 1.2–1.6 mm wide; glabrous. Perianth absent. Anthers 1.8–2.2 mm long. Styles slender, not extending beyond the beak. Stigmas per style 2. Fruit surrounded by a perigynium. Perigynia with a slit running down the beak on the abaxial side through which the style protrudes; broadly ovate (to fusiform); 2.3–3(–3.5) mm long; 1.2–1.6 mm wide; sessile (or almost sessile); erect or ascending; straw-coloured (grayish, greenish or reddish brown); surface dull; glabrous; strongly nerved (adaxial surface); apices beaked with a short beak. Achenes filling the perigynia; trigonous (slightly).
Chromosome information. 2n = 66.
Distribution. Circumpolar. Arctic. Uncommon. Arctic Islands: Baffin, Devon, and Ellesmere (literature record), Victoria (literature record), Coats (Cairne Cove).
Ecology and habitat. Substrate sea shore (on flats just above the strand line), ridges (and rocky ledges near the sea); imperfectly drained; halophytic; rock, gravel, clay. Typically situated between Puccinellia phryganodes meadows and tundra by the sea. Common around bays and lagoons and often the dominant species around the nesting grounds of sea birds.
Notes. Porsild (1957) recognized C. glareosa var. amphigena Fern., but this is no longer consider a recognisable entity (P. Ball, personal communication, 1998).
Halliday and Charter (1969a) examined fruit shape in the circumpolar C. glareosa complex and concluded there is continuous variation between the long, fusiform fruits of C. glareosa and the broad fruits of plants which are referred either to C. marina Dewey or C. glareosa var. amphigena Fern.
Halliday and Chater (1969a) indicated that the species C. glareosa and C. lachenalii Schkuhr are fairly closely related. Carex lachenalii is a species of freshwater mires and snow patches, but in east Greenland it occurs not infrequently by the seashore where poorly developed individuals may very closely resemble C. glareosa. By contrast, C. glareosa is nearly always maritime growing in the Arctic with C. subspathacea, C. ursina, Puccinellia phryganodes and Stellaria humifusa. Halliday and Chater (1969) gave the following characters for separating C. glareosa from C. lachenalii:
C. glareosa plants have leaves with stomata on both surfaces, C. lachenalii plants have stomata on the lower surface only. In C. glareosa the lateral spikes are entirely pistillate, in C. lachenalii they have staminate flowers at the base. The fruits of C. glareosa are seldom distinctly beaked, concolorus and they may vary from brown to pale, whitish green; the fruits of C. lachenalii are distinctly beaked, dark brown and often tinged with green
Porsild (1957) mapped records from Victoria and Ellesmere Islands, but these have not been confirmed.
Illustrations. • Close-up of plant. Erect tufted plants growing on hillside away from the sea. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Susan Aiken 97–027, CAN. • Plants in habitat. Gray-green, prostrate plants growing in a saline meadow. Scale bar in cm. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Iqaluit, S.G. Aiken, 97–035, CAN. • Close-up of plant. Close-up of a prostrate plant from the pevious image. Scale bar in cm. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Susan Aiken 97–035, CAN. • Close-up of plants. Slightly flexuous stems, taller than the leaves. Scale bar in cm. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Susan Aiken 97–028, CAN. • Close-up of plants. Plant approximately 10 cm in height. Inflorescence multispicate with spikes close together. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Susan Aiken 97–027, CAN. • Close-up of inflorescence. Multispicate inflorescence with three closely grouped spikes. Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Nunavut, Susan Aiken 97–027, CAN. • Close-up of inflorescence. Terminal spike with staminate flowers at the base seen as white anther filaments. Lateral spikes entirely pistillate. Baffin Island, Iqaluit. Nunavut, Susan Aiken 97–028, CAN. • Arctic Island distribution.
Cite this publication as: Aiken, S.G., Boles, R.L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1999 onwards. ‘Cyperaceae of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval.’ Version: 6th November 2000. http://http://www.mun.ca/biology/delta/arcticf/. Dallwitz (1980) and Dallwitz, Paine and Zurcher (1993, 1995, 2000) should also be cited (see References).
