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Sedge family (Cyperaceae)
Perennial forming tussocks. Leaves dark green, wintergreen, widths 2-5 mm, violet or purple at basal sheaths. Flower stems of heights 10-30 cm, with small leaves at bottom. Inflorescence has 2-4 female spikes with 5-10 flowers plus one male spike. It rather recalls digits of hand. Bracts of female flowers red-brown. 3-angled capsules, pale green or brown, with short beak, hairy. Flowers Apr.-May.
Grows on mesic soils, nutrient-rich or mesotrophic; in oak-lime-hornbeam forest and mixed/coniferous forest and oak woodland, more rarely in elm-ash riparian forest.
Descriptions devised by the team at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, i.e. L. Witkowska-Żuk, K. Marciszewska, W. Ciurzycki, A. Obidziński and P. Zaniewski.
