泽库薹草 ze ku tai cao

Rhizome slender. Culms 15-20 cm tall, slightly slender, 0.3-0.8 mm thick, obtusely trigonous, glabrous. Leaves basal, shorter than or equaling culm, blades 1-2 mm wide, flat, smooth on both surfaces. Involucral bracts leaflike, shorter than inflorescence, rather long sheathed. Spikes 4 or 5; upper 2 or 3 spikes male, contiguous, band-shaped, uppermost one 1.5-2 cm, others rather short; female spikes 1 or 2, remote, narrowly oblong, 2-3 cm, loosely 4-10-flowered; peduncles slender, usually pendulous; rachis flexuose. Female glumes brownish, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, 4-5 mm, 1-veined, margins narrowly white hyaline, apex acuminate. Utricles purplish brown, obliquely patent, longer than glume, obovate or broadly elliptic, obtusely trigonous, 5-6 mm, leathery, glabrous, shiny, distinctly 2-veined laterally, base broadly cuneate, apex abruptly contracted into a long beak, beak 2-2.5 mm, orifice deeply 2-lobed. Nutlets yellow-green, obovate or broadly elliptic, obtusely trigonous, ca. 3 mm; style base not thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Jul-Aug.

● Mountain slopes; ca. 3200 m. E and S Qinghai.