Carex fumosimontana (Cyperaceae), a new endemic from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee

Carex fumosimontana (Great Smoky Mountain Sedge), a new and narrowly endemic species of section Phacocystis, is described from the southern Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It differs from the closely related C. gynandra in its dark reddish-brown pistillate scales that are strongly retuse apically, shorter spikes, narrower leaves, and strongly red-scabrous proximal sheath faces. It is locally abundant and sometimes the dominant sedge where it occurs in spite of being completely restricted to high-elevation spruce-fir forests and associated environs of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.