太白山薹草 tai bai shan tai cao

Rhizome thick, woody, rigid. Culms 15-40 cm tall, somewhat slender, trigonous, smooth, clothed at base with dark brown fibrous sheaths. Leaves flat, revolute, green, leathery, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts shortly bladed, long sheathing. Spikes 3 or 4; terminal spike male, red-brown, linear-clavate, 1.5-2.5 cm; lateral spikes 2 or 3, female, sometimes with several male flowers at apex, cylindric, 2.5-4 cm, densely flowered; peduncles erect. Female glumes light green-yellow, ovate-lanceolate, green 3-veined costa forming a mucro at obtuse apex. Utricles pale brown, equaling or longer than glume, obliquely patent, elliptic, 6-6.5 mm (including beak), membranous, sparsely pubescent, many veined, base gradually narrowed, apex abruptly contracted into a cylindric long beak, orifice 2-toothed. Nutlets yellow when young, dark brown at maturity, loosely enveloped, elliptic-ovate, ca. 2.5 mm, trigonous with angles constricted at middle, faces concave, base shortly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a short beak, slightly curved; style persistent, base thickened; stigmas 3. Fr. Apr-May.

● Forested slopes, thickets along valleys; ca. 1200 m. Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan.