金华薹草 jin hua tai cao

Rhizome oblique, covered with fibrous, brown remnants of old scales. Culms 15-35 cm tall, obscurely trigonous, smooth, basal leaf sheaths dark brown, split into fibers. Leaves shorter than culm, blades 4-12 mm wide, flat, densely pilose throughout, margins scabrid. Involucral bracts leafy, pilose, blade much shorter than inflorescence, sheath 3-7 mm. Spikes 4-6; peduncles erect to flexuose, well exserted from involucral bract sheath; terminal spike male, ca. 10-flowered, cylindric, 1-2 × 0.2-0.25 cm, with peduncle 2-14 mm; lateral spikes female, oblong to cylindric, 12-40 × 2-4 mm, upper 2 contiguous, lower ones widely spaced. Female glumes pale yellow-green, broadly obovate, 2-2.5 mm, green costa 3-veined, apex truncate to rounded, awnless. Utricles greenish brown, ca. 1.5 × as long as glume, fusiform, ca. 3.5 mm, membranous, puberulent, several veined, base attenuate into a short stipe 0.3-0.4 mm, apex attenuate into a straight beak, orifice weakly 2-toothed. Nutlet yellow-brown, tightly enveloped, trigonous, fusiform, ca. 2.5 mm, with angles constricted at middle and faces excavated in both upper and lower parts, base with stipe ca. 1 mm, apex with short cylindric neck 0.4-0.5 mm; style base slightly thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Apr-Jun.

● Hillsides. Zhejiang (Jinhua).