东方薹草 dong fang tai cao

Rhizome rather short. Culms up to 80 cm tall, compressed trigonous, slender, straight. Basal sheath bladeless, brown, shiny. Leaves longer than culm, blades 6-7 mm wide, with distinct midvein and transverse veinlets, margins scabrid. Involucral bracts sheathed, lower 2 or 3 leaflike, upper 1 or 2 bristlelike. Spikes 4 or 5; terminal spike male, linear-cylindric, 4-10 × ca. 0.4 cm, shortly pedunculate; lateral spikes female, linear-cylindric, 3-3.5 cm, ca. 4 mm thick; peduncles 1.5-5 cm, mostly enclosed in involucral bract sheaths. Female glumes pale yellow, oblong, ca. 3 mm, membranous, with distinct costa excurrent into a mucro, apex acute. Utricles greenish yellow, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, ca. 3.5 mm, herbaceous, minutely hirsute or subglabrous, with a few slender veins, base attenuate, apex gradually attenuate into a short beak ca. 1 mm, orifice obliquely truncate and minutely 2-toothed. Nutlet brown-yellow, tightly enveloped, elliptic-ovate, obtusely trigonous, ca. 2 mm, with angles contracted at middle and faces excavated both in upper and lower parts, base abruptly narrowed to a short stipe, apex abruptly contracted into an annulate disk; style base thickened; stigmas 3.

● Mountain slopes; 900-1400 m. Hainan.