双柱薹草 shuang zhu tai cao

Rhizome short, stoloniferous. Culms tufted, 8-13 cm tall, rigid, clothed at base with brown bladeless sheaths. Leaves shorter than culm, blades linear, 3-4 mm wide, flat, stiff. Involucral bracts reduced to shortly bladed, sheathless. Spikes 4 or 5, lowest one subradical; upper 1-3 spikes male; remaining spikes female, ovate, 1-1.5 × 0.6-0.7 cm, densely many flowered, with short peduncles. Female glumes brown, oblong, 4-6 mm, glabrous, margins white hyaline, green 1-veined costa excurrent into a mucro at apex. Utricles pale below, brown above, equaling glume, oblong, slightly compressed, papery, glabrous, faintly veined, base contracted and shortly stipitate, margins hispid, apex gradually attenuate into an obliquely truncate long beak, 2-toothed. Nutlets suborbicular, ca. 2 mm; style puberulent, base not thickened; stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep.

● Alpine thickets and meadows; 3900-4100 m. Sichuan.