黑麦嵩草 hei mai song cao

Rhizomes short. Basal sheaths few, pale brown, dull, retaining dried leaf blades. Culms tufted, 15-45 cm tall, slender, 1-1.5 mm in diam. Leaves basal or sub-basal, shorter than culms; blade flat, 1.5-2 mm wide, midrib distinct abaxially. Inflorescence loosely paniculate, yellowish green, linear, 2.5-6 × 0.4-0.5 cm; lowest involucral bract leafy, longer than inflorescence. Spikelets bisexual with 1 basal female flower and 1-4 distal male flowers, sometimes unisexual with only 1 female flower; glumes yellowish green, oblong, 4.5-5.5 × 2-2.5 mm, apex mucronate. Prophylls yellowish green, utriculiform, oblong or elliptic, 5-6.6 × ca. 2 mm, papery, 2-keeled, keels smooth, many veined between keels, apex attenuate into beak. Nutlets pale to dark brown, obovoid-oblong, obscurely trigonous, 2.8-3.8 × 1-2 mm, not beaked. Rachilla in unisexual spikelets prominent, flat, ca. 2/3 as long as nutlet, with a sterile male glume at apex. Stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep.

● Slopes, roadsides, grasslands; 3200-3400 m. Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan.