Moist, often calcareous and/or sandy ground at edges of conifer (especially cedar and fir) forests and thickets near the northern shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, even on mossy logs in rivers and streams through such forests; also along roads, trails, clearings, and similar openings. On rock shores of Lake Superior in Keweenaw Co., and rarely seepy calcareous cliffs and ledges elsewhere, such as along the Escanaba River. A circumboreal species, here uncommon inland from the Great Lakes.

This is a delicate and easily overlooked sedge. The St. Clair Co. record, from 1893, seems quite disjunct, but the plant was also known (at least historically) from Lambton Co., Ontario, and then north along the east shore of Lake Huron to the Bruce Peninsula, where relatively frequent.