富宁薹草 fu ning tai cao

Rhizome short, woody. Culms lateral, up to 40 cm tall, compressed trigonous, smooth, clothed at base with dark brown sheaths disintegrating into fibers. Leaves surpassing culm, blades broadly linear, 7-9 mm wide, base plicate and flattened distally, adaxial surface and upper margins scabrous, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, almost sheathless. Spike 1, female, cylindric, ca. 5.5 × 1 mm, pedunculate. Female glumes yellow-white, lanceolate, 6-8 mm, green 3-veined costa excurrent into a long awn. Utricles green, longer than glume, obliquely patent, ovate (excluding beak), 7-7.5 mm (including beak), membranous, sparsely pubescent, conspicuously many veined, apex abruptly contracted into a long beak, orifice 2-toothed. Nutlets pale castaneous, tightly enveloped, trigonous ovate, ca. 4 mm, constricted on angles at middle, faces concave at base, base very shortly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a cylindric beak ca. 1.5 mm, orifice inflated; style persistent, base not thickened; stigmas 3. Fr. Apr.

● Dense forests; ca. 1100 m. SE Yunnan.

No male spike was described. This is unusual because in Carex sect. Rhomboidales no unispicate species should exist. This species requires further study.