This lifeform is widespread in North America.

Bristly Sedge (Carex comosa) is found from Maine to Washington to California to Florida.

Carex (common sedges) is a worldwide genus of over 1,000 different species of grass-like plants that is most abundant in the temperate zones of the world.  In the original three-volume edition of the Britton and Brown botany  (An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, 1913) covering the eastern United States, over 240 species are described.  Kartesz shows 476 species,  61 hybrids, and 177 subspecies as being found in his greater  North America, including United States, Canada, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Many of these species prefer wet habitats and consequently they are found in wet meadows, near  lake and river shores, and in wet woods.  One characteristic that will help identify a plant as a sedge is a main stem that has a triangular cross section.  Many of the species in this genus are very hard to identify.

Sedges (Family Cyperaceae) are found worldwide, but are most frequently found in the extreme northern and southern hemispheres. There are about 3,200 species found in the world. Many of the species in this family have stems that are triangular in cross section. This helps separate them from the round stemmed grasses.

The l970 Dover edition of the l913 edition of Brown and Britain lists over 350 species from the eastern United States, including 242 species in the genus Carex. With another group native to the western states of the same magnitude, there are probably about 400 species of sedges in the United States.

Many species are very hard to identify. There are experts who concentrate on just this family. Most sedges prefer damp
habitats in open sunlight. They are frequently found on lake shores, stream and river shores, and in marshy meadows.

Glumiflorae are a group of Monocots that contain the grasses and the sedges. (The similar-looking rushes, which are more closely related to the lilies, are usually not placed here.)

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.