蜈蚣薹草 wu gong tai cao

Rhizome elongate, creeping. Culms 15-30 cm tall, 0.5-0.8 mm thick, slender and soft. Leaves shorter than or equaling culm, filiform, soft, dark brown and persistent sheathed at base. Involucral bracts sheathlike, brown, with setaceous blade. Spikes 2; terminal spike male, linear, 1.2-1.3 cm, ca. 1 mm thick, densely many flowered; peduncle thin, 2.5-3 cm, surpassing lower female spike; lateral spike 1, female, oblong, 5-6 mm, laxly 2- or 3-flowered; peduncle rather slender, slightly exserted from involucral bract sheath. Female glumes brown, subovate, 2.4-2.6 mm, papery, 1-veined, margins broadly white hyaline, apex attenuate and mucronate. Utricles green-brown, longer than glume, broadly ovoid, inflated trigonous, 3.5-3.6 mm, densely hispidulous, 2-veined laterally and longitudinally several veined, base abruptly contracted into a short stipe, apex contracted into a moderately long beak, orifice membranous, 2-toothed. Nutlets brown at maturity, broadly obovoid, trigonous, ca. 1.8 mm; style base thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. May-Jun.

● Wet grasslands on mountain slopes, thickets, Pinus forests; 1000-3500 m. NW Hunan (Zhangjiajie: Tianmen Shan), SW Sichuan, NW Yunnan (Lijiang, Zhongdian).