Chiefly in bogs and fens, often on the open mat at the edge of water; also on open shores of lakes and ponds, at the edges of the sedge meadow vegetation.

The blue-green stiff, narrow upright leaves of Carex limosa stand out in the wettest portions of many fens and bogs. Some vegetative shoots of C. limosa elongate after fruiting into long leafy stolons, which creep across mats and even into shallow water. These are very like the stolons of C. chordorrhiza, which sometimes occurs in the same habitats, but which lack reddish pigmentation on the sheath bases and have more yellow-green leaves

See notes under Carex magellanica.