卵穗薹草 luan sui tai cao

Rhizome short. Culms 25-50 cm tall, smooth, clothed at base with brown sheaths usually disintegrating into fibers. Leaves shorter than or subequaling culm, blades linear, 1-2.5 mm wide, flat, soft, margins slightly scabrous, apex acuminate; membranous side of leaf sheaths emarginate. Lower involucral bracts leaflike, surpassing inflorescence, upper ones setaceous or glumelike. Spikes 5-11, gynaecandrous, ovate, 3-6 × 3-4 mm, upper spikes approximate, lower ones remote. Female glumes pale, ovate, 2-2.2 mm wide, green 1-veined costa forming a mucro, apex acuminate or acute. Utricles yellowish green, longer than glume, ovate or broadly ovate, ca. 2.5 × 1 mm, membranous, usually nerveless or rarely faintly 1- or 2-veined, base cuneate, upper margins narrowly serrulate winged and gray-green, apex abruptly contracted into a short beak, orifice 2-toothed. Nutlets tightly enveloped, elliptic-obovate, plano-convex, ca. 1.5 mm; style base thickened; stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Jun-Aug.

● Streambanks, wet places; 1700-3500 m. Hunan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan.