火炉山薹草 huo lu shan tai cao

Rhizome stout, stoloniferous. Culms densely tufted, 15-40 cm tall, ca. 1.5 mm thick, slender, obtusely trigonous. Leaves shorter than culm, flat, blades 1-3 mm wide, soft, margins scabrous, base dark brown and persistent sheathed. Involucral bracts spathelike, sheaths brownish, with linear involucral bract leaf at apex. Spikes 3 or 4; terminal spike male, cylindric, 2-2.5 cm, ca. 3 mm thick, densely many flowered, peduncle slender, 3.5-4 cm, taller than adjacent female spike; lateral spikes 2 or 3, female, remote, cylindric, 1-4 cm, 2-3 mm thick, many flowered, loosely several flowered at lower part, densely many flowered at upper part, peduncles slender, soft, rather long exserted from involucral bract sheath. Female glumes dark purple-brown laterally, green at middle, oblong, 4-5 mm, papery, scabrous abaxially, 3-veined, margins broadly white hyaline, apex truncate or emarginate, mucronate. Utricles greenish, shorter than glume, oblong or obovate-oblong, obtusely trigonous, ca. 4 mm, 2-veined laterally and not thinly veined, hispidulous on veins and margins, base gradually narrowed to a stipe, apex contracted into a short beak, orifice emarginate. Nutlets brownish at maturity, obovate-oblong, trigonous, 2.5-3 mm, base nearly estipitate, apex rounded; style base slightly thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Jun-Jul.

● Thickets on high mountains; 3900-4000 m. SW Sichuan (Yanyuan).