和平菱果薹草 he ping ling guo tai cao

Carex sharyotensis Hayata.

Rhizome slender, horizontal, with slender stolons. Culms slender, 13-14 cm tall, 0.3-0.7 mm thick, trigonous, smooth, clothed at base with dark brown sheaths eventually disintegrating into fibers. Leaves equaling or slightly longer than culm, blades green, linear, 2-3 mm wide, flattish plicate, scabrous adaxially, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, sheathing. Spikes 3 or 4, distant; terminal spike male, pale brownish, linear or linear-oblong, 10-30 × 1.5-2.5 mm, much surpassing uppermost female spike; lateral spikes female, oblong, 10-15 × ca. 4 mm, subloosely 5-10-flowered; peduncles erect, upper 1 or 2 short and enclosed, lower 1 or 2 exserted. Female glumes pale, usually brownish margined, obovate-elliptic or obovate, 3.8-4 mm, membranous, green 3-veined costa excurrent into a straight short awn, apex rounded or shallowly emarginate. Utricles pale greenish, longer than glume, erect, patent, rhomboid, trigonous, 5-6 mm, thinly leathery, slightly shiny, sparsely hirsute to glabrescent, obscurely few veined or nearly nerveless except for 2 costas on edges, cuneate at both ends, apical beak conic, obliquely truncate at sharply 2-toothed orifice. Nutlets tightly enveloped, obovate, ca. 2.5 mm, trigonous with angles shallowly constricted at middle, base cuneate, shortly stipitate, apex obtuse; style base slightly thickened; stigmas 3.

Grasslands at low elevations. Taiwan [WC Japan, S Korea].