3309137 Carex nardina Fr.
- Fr., Novit. Fl. Svec. Mant. 2: 55 (1839). Described from "Lapland" (northern Sweden).
Geography: Amphi-Beringian - North American - amphi-Atlantic (W).
Notes: Murray and Elven: Egorova (1966a, 1999) assumed that Carex nardina s. str. was restricted to northwestern Europe (Fennoscandia, Iceland, Svalbard), whereas the plants elsewhere belonged to C. hepburnii. The situation is probably more complicated. The plants of Fennoscandia and Iceland differ from at least the majority of plants from North America, Greenland, and Svalbard in shape and structure of perigynia. They are also mostly small-grown and with curved leaves but these differences are not constant. Plants conforming morphologically with Scandinavian C. nardina are stated to occur within North American material (see Ball's comment below). We therefore only provisionally, after discussion with Egorova, accept two subspecies. The northwestern European plant (subsp. nardina) seems to be a morphologically uniform segregate from the much more widespread and polymorphic arctic and North American plant (subsp. hepburnii + possibly subsp. nardina) and may have developed its small differences in some fairly recent (late Pleistocene or Holocene) isolation, possibly through a bottleneck event.
Higher Taxa
- Carex [3309,genus]