San Diego Sedge (Carex spissa L.H. Bailey)

BONAP has merged this species into cochise sedge (Carex ultra), but we have kept them separate, per POWO's treatment. POWO does merge a species recognized by some authorities, Carex seatoniana, into a variety of this species, Carex spissa var. seatoniana. FNA gives an argument for merging these three groups of plants into one taxon, notably that the morphology intergrades continuously between all three forms, and does not correlate well with geography. We are not aware of POWO's reasoning for merging one group but not the other. We also are puzzled at BONAP's rationale for merging into C. ultra because the convention of most authors who merge the taxa into one, instead name it C. spissa, reflecting that that name is older, and the merge is especially unintuitive given that the populations referred to by C. spissa, when the three are split, have a much broader range, so we could not see a practical reason to ignore convention here.