华南薹草 hua nan tai cao

Rhizome woody. Culms 25-45 cm tall, slender, trigonous, smooth, clothed at base with brown sheaths often disintegrating into fibers. Leaves surpassing culm, blades dark green, linear, 1.5-3 mm wide, margins scabrous, revolute, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, long sheathing, lowest involucral bract longer than culm. Spikes 3 or 4, distant; terminal spike male, yellow-brown, linear-cylindric, 3-4 × 0.2-0.25 cm, with slender long peduncle; lateral spikes androgynous, male part 1/3-1/2 length of female part, cylindric, loosely flowered. Female glumes yellow-brown, ovate, green 3-veined costa excurrent into a scabrous awn, apex truncate or sometimes emarginate. Utricles brown, longer than glume, obliquely patent, lanceolate, 5-6 mm, papery, glabrous, slender, many veined, base cuneate, apex gradually narrowed to a smooth or slightly scabrous long beak, orifice 2-toothed. Nutlets brown, tightly enveloped, obovate, trigonous, 2.5-3 mm, faces concave, base curved stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a curved beak ca. 1 mm, beak annulate at orifice; style base thickened; stigmas 3. Fr. Jun.

● Rocky slopes; ca. 1100 m. Guangdong.