Lyngbye's Sedge

Carex lyngbyei is the common sedge of the Pacific coastal salt marshes. It may easily be distinguished from sympatric species by the large, pendent, pedunculate spikes and the leathery, yellow-brown perigynia.

Although the species is also reported to occur in Japan and Korea, some Asian collections show significant morphologic and habitat differences from the North American plants. It is probably most closely related to Carex paleacea and to the South American C. darwinii, and differs from C. paleacea primarily by having acute, rather than awned, scales. Previous reports from eastern North American were misidentifications (J. Cayouette 1987).

Plants not cespitose. Culms obtusely or acutely angled, 25–130 cm, glabrous. Leaves: basal sheaths red-brown; sheaths of proximal leaves glabrous, fronts lacking spots and veins, apex U-shaped; blades hypostomic, 3–8 mm wide, abaxially papillose. Proximal bract longer than inflorescence, 3–6 mm wide. Spikes usually pendent; staminate 2–3; pistillate 2–4; proximal pistillate spike 1.8–5 cm × 5–7 mm, base obtuse. Pistillate scales red-brown to dark purple-brown, longer than perigynia, apex acuminate, awnless. Perigynia divergent, yellow-brown with pale brown spots on apical 1/2, 5–7-veined on each face, somewhat inflated, loosely enclosing achenes, 2.5–3.5 × 1.6–2.5 mm, leathery, dull, base with stipe to 0.5 mm, apex obtuse or rounded, papillose; beak thickened, 0.1–0.3 mm. Achenes constricted on 1 or both margins, apex rounded; style base straight. 2n = 68, 70, 72.

Greenland; B.C.; Alaska, Calif., Oreg., Wash.; Europe (Iceland).

Fruiting Jul–Aug.

Coastal salt marshes, brackish marshes; 0–10m.

Carex cryptocarpa C. A. Meyer; C. lyngbyei var. cryptocarpa (C. A. Meyer) Hultén; C. lyngbyei var. robusta (L. H. Bailey) Cronquist; C. salina Wahlenberg var. robusta L. H. Bailey

Carex lyngbyei Hornem. Fl. Dan. 32: 6. pi. 1888. 1827
Carex cryptocarpa C. Meyer, Mem. Acad. St.-Petersb. Sav. Etr. 1:226. pi. 14. 1831. (Type from
Unalaska and Kamtchatka.) Carex Scouleri Torr. Ann. Lye. N. Y. 3 : 399. 1836. (Type from Observatory Inlet, western America.) Temnemis Scouleri Raf. Good Book 27. 1840. (Based on Carex Scouleri Torr.) Carex fi.lipend.ula and var. variegata and var. littoralis and var. concolor Drejer, Nat. Tidssk. 3: 464.
1841. (Types from Iceland.) Carex haematolepis Drejer, Nat. Tidssk. 3: 462. 1841. (Type from Iceland.) Carex capillipes Drejer, Nat. Tidssk. 3: 468. 1841. (Type from Iceland.) Carex Steenstrupiana Liebm. Forh. Skand. Nat. 2: 321. 1841. (Type from Iceland.) Carex Romanzowiana Cham.; Steud. Syn. Cyp. 216. 1855. (Type from Unalaska.) Carex salina var. robusta L. H. Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 13: 87. 1888. (Type from Vancouver Island.) Carex Macounii A. Benn.; Macoun, Cat. Can. PI. 4: 147. 1888. (Same as C. salina var. robusta
L. H. Bailey.) Not C. Macounii Dewey, 1866. Carex cryptocarpa var. pumila L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 1: 27. 1889. (Based on C. filipendula var. variegata Drejer.) Carex salina subsp. cuspidata var. concolor Almq. Bot. Notiser 1891: 127. 1891. (Based on C.
filipendula var. concolor Drejer.) Carex salina subsp. cuspidata var. haematolepis Almq. Bot. Notiser 1891: 127. 1891. (Technically
based on C. haematolepis Drejer.) Carex qualicumensis L. H. Bailey, Bull. Torrey Club 20: 428. 1893. (Based on C. salina var.
robusta L. H. Bailey.) Carex cryptocarpa var. variegata Britton; L. H. Bailey, Mem. Torrey Club 5: 76. 1894. (Based
on C. filipendula var. variegata Drejer.) Carex salina subsp. cuspidata var. kattegatensis f. filipendula Almq.; Hjelt, Acta Soc. Faun. Fl. Fenn.
5:281. 1895. (Based on C. filipendula Drejer.) Carex prionocarpa Franch. Bull. Soc. Philom. VIII. 7: 87. 1895. (Type from Japan.) Carex cryptochlaena Holm, Am. Jour. Sci. IV. 20: 305; 307. /. 16. 1905. (Type from Kussiloff,
Alaska.) Carex Lyngbyei vars. capillipes and prionocarpa Kukenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4 2 °: 364. 1909.
(Based on C. capillipes Drejer and C. prionocarpa Franch.) Carex Lyngbyei var. variegata "Drejer" Kukenth. in Engler, Pflanzenreich 4 20 : 364. 1909. (Based
on C. filipendula var. variegata Drejer.) Carex cryptocarpa f. remota and var. sphaerochlaena Holm, Am. Jour. Sci. IV. 50: 161. 1920.
(Types from Alaska and Vancouver.) Carex behringensis Gand. Bull. Soc. Bot. 66: 295. 1920. (Type from St. Paul Island, Bering
Sea.) Not C. behringensis C. B. Clarke, 1908.
In large beds, sending forth long, horizontal, stout, yellowish-brown scaly stolons, the culms several together, 2-9 dm. high, stout at base or slender, rather stiff, exceeding the leaves, triangular, smooth or very slightly roughened above, purplish-red or brownish at base, aphyllopodic, the lower sheaths not at all or but very little filamentose, the dried-up basal leaves conspicuous; leaves of the flowering year with well-developed blades 4—8 to a fertile culm, not densely clustered, the blades flat with revolute margins, firm, dull-green, the upper 0.5-5 dm. long, 2-12 mm. wide, long-attenuate and roughened towards apex, the lower much reduced, the sheaths smooth, whitish or yellowish-tinged ventrally, the ligule wider than long, emarginate at apex; staminate spikes 2 or 3, slender-peduncled, linear, 1.5-4 cm. long, 2.5-5 mm. wide, the scales oblong-obovate, varying from awned to obtuse, brownish-black with lighter center and slightly hyaline margins; pistillate spikes 2-4, more or less strongly separate, pendulous on smooth or slightly roughened slender peduncles, 1-3 times as long as the spikes, the spikes linear-oblong (varying rarely to ovoid), usually more or less staminate at apex, 1-S cm. (usually 2-5 cm.) long, 5-10 mm. wide, rounded at base, densely flowered, the numerous perigynia appressed-ascending or spreading in age in several to many rows; bracts sheathless or the lowest sheathing, the lowest leaf-like, more or less strongly exceeding culm, the upper much reduced; scales ovate or ovate-lanceolate, acuminate to acute or even cuspidate or awned, wider or somewhat narrower than and from shorter than to two and a half times exceeding perigynia, reddish-brown to brownish-black with lighter 3-nerved center and slightly hyaline margins and often hyaline at apex ; perigynia oblong-obovoid or oblong-ovoid to suborbicular, 2.5-3.5 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, unequally biconvex, 2-ribbed (the marginal), very obscurely to strongly nerved, coriaceous, puncticulate, minutely granular, glaucous-green, at length brownish, the margins smooth or occasionally sparsely scabrous, rounded at base, broadly substipitate, abruptly apiculate, the beak 0.2 mm. long, whitish, entire; achenes lenticular, 2.5 mm. long, 1.5 mm. wide, loosely enveloped, nearly filling perigynium, deeply constricted in middle, broadly short-stipitate, minutely apiculate, jointed with the short style; stigmas 2, short.
Type locality: Faroe Islands.
Distribution: Brackish soil, near the coast, Greenland to Anticosti; on the Pacific coast from the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands to extreme northwestern California; south on the Asiatic coast to Japan and Manchuria; Iceland; northern Europe. (Specimens examined from Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, [Anticosti Island], Oregon, northwestern California, Washington, Vancouver Island, Alaska.)

Carex lyngbyei is a species of sedge known by the common name Lyngbye's sedge. It is native to the west coast of North America from Alaska to California, where it "is the common sedge of the Pacific coastal salt marshes." It is also known from Greenland and Iceland. It prefers to grow in silty sediment rather than sand and in habitat with brackish water, such as salt marshes. This sedge produces stems 25 centimeters to well over one meter tall from a network of long rhizomes. The leaves have reddish brown sheaths which do not have spots. The inflorescence produces stiff, nodding spikes on peduncles. The fruit is coated in a leathery yellowish brown sac called a perigynium. This is a pioneer species, one of the first plants to colonize the mud of tidal flats in its range.