锐果薹草 rui guo tai cao

Carex taihokuensis Hayata.

Rhizome short. Culms lateral, slender, 10-30 cm tall, trigonous, erect, smooth, clothed at base with 2-4 purplish or dark brown, bladeless or shortly bladed sheaths disintegrating into parallel fibers. Leaves surpassing culm, blades broadly or narrowly linear, 2.5-8 mm wide, flattish, soft or subrigid. Spikes 2-4, all or occasionally except lowest one subfastigiate; terminal spike male, pale brownish, linear, 5-10 mm, surpassed by next female spike, few or several flowered; lateral spikes female or rarely with a few male flowers at apex, suberect, oblong, 7-12 × ca. 5 mm, subloosely 3-7-flowered, sessile or subsessile. Female glumes pale, lanceolate to lanceolate-oblong, 3-4 mm, membranous, glaucous green 3-veined costa projecting beyond apex forming a short erect awn or cusp, apex subacute. Utricles light green, longer than glume, erect-patent, rhomboid or rhomboid-ovate, trigonous, 6-7 mm, papery, glabrous to sparsely hirsute, faintly several veined, base cuneate, shortly stipitate, apex truncate and narrowed to a slender beak ca. 2 mm, beak scabrous on edges, 2-toothed at orifice. Nutlets tightly enveloped, ovate or oblong-ovate, ca. 3 mm, trigonous with shallowly concave sides; style base slightly thickened; stigmas 3.

● Wet grasslands on mountain slopes. Taiwan.