85. Carex cryptostachys Brongniart in Duperrey, Voy. Monde, Phanérog. 152. 1832.
隐穗薹草 yin sui tai cao
Rhizome long, woody, covered with dark brown fibrous remnants of basal sheaths. Flowering culms arising from axils of leaves, 12-30 cm tall, compressed trigonous, scapelike, flaccid. Leaves longer than culm, blades 6-15 mm wide, flat, smooth, leathery, margins scabrid. Involucral bracts bristlelike, sheathed, sheath 5-15 mm. Spikes 6-10, nearly all (at least terminal one) androgynous, oblong or cylindric, 8-25 mm, loosely flowered; male part short, 3-5 mm; peduncle 7-25 mm, slender. Female glumes pale brown to yellow-green, ovate-oblong, ca. 2.2 mm, costa green, apex acute or mucronate. Utricles yellow-green, longer than glume, oblong-rhombic to obovate-fusiform, obscurely trigonous, 4-5 mm, membranous, densely puberulent above and ciliate on margins, many veined, base cuneate, with a stipe ca. 1 mm, apex attenuate into a short beak, orifice minutely 2-toothed. Nutlets trigonous, rhombic, 2.5-3 mm, faces excavated in both upper and lower parts, angles constricted at middle; style base persistent, bent; stigmas 3. Fl. winter, fr. next spring.
Wet places in dense forests; 100-1200 m. Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan [Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam; Australia].