Carex utriculata

Southern beaked sedge, Southern Beaked Sedge

Family: Cyperaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Southern beaked sedge is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, high Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Central Coast, San Francisco Bay Area, San Bernardino Mountains, and eastern Sierra Nevada in wet places and shallow water at elevations below 3,400 meters. Flowering from late spring to summer, this sedge produces green spikelets with reddish margins on lateral stems. Growing with robust rhizomatous stems 30 to 120 centimeters tall, the plant has blunt stem angles and a spongy-thickened base. Its leaves are approximately equal in length to the inflorescence, with lower leaf sheaths displaying a distinctive brickwork pattern of crosswalls. The fruit consists of inflated, shiny gold to brown perigynia 3.9 to 7 millimeters long, with a short beak and tiny erect teeth.

Habitat: Common. Wet places, shallow water

Elevation: < 3400 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoR, CaRH, SNH, CCo, SnFrB, SnBr, SNE

California counties: Butte, Mono, San Bernardino, Alpine, El Dorado, Fresno, Humboldt, Inyo, Marin, Mendocino, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tulare, Tuolumne, Ventura, Shasta, Lassen, Madera, Calaveras, Santa Cruz, Amador, Glenn, Tehama, Trinity, Mariposa, Lake, Sonoma, Los Angeles

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.