Most typically in acid soils of swamps, bog margins, and sedge meadows, often on hummocks; edges of shrub thickets surrounding fens. 

The uniqe combination of awned pistillate scales and perigynium bodies widest above the middle allow this uncommon species to be readily identified.  Stems are often tall, and generally few in a clump, and when robust also recognizable by the spikes being broadly ovate, but conspicuously tapered to a pointed apex.