紫花珍珠茅 zi hua zhen zhu mao

Perennials. Rhizomes hardened. Culms 1-2 m tall, 3-7 mm thick, triquetrous, scabrous or smooth on apical angles, glabrous or pubescent. Leaves ± in whorls of 2-5 at mid-culm (otherwise scattered); sheath 3-6 cm, papery, glabrous, wingless; contraligule depressed rounded, margin hirsute-ciliate; leaf blade linear, 30-60 × 0.3-1.5 cm, thickly papery, slightly scabrous, apically long acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, basalmost to 15 cm, sheathing; bractlets setaceous. Inflorescences paniculate, 20-50 cm, with 1-4 branches; lateral branches often 2 or 3 clustered, spreading, 4-10 × ca. 10 cm, axes angled. Spikelets 2 or 3 in a cluster, brown, 3-4 mm, unisexual (rarely bisexual). Male spikelets oblong-ovoid, pedicellate, apex truncate; glumes rust-colored to brown, 3-4 mm, membranous, basal ones keeled and with a cuspidate apex. Female spikelets obovoid, apex acuminate; glumes broadly ovate to ovate, keeled. Male flowers: stamens 3; anthers linear, ca. 1 mm; connective apex protruding, ca. 1/4 as long as anther. Female flowers: stigmas 3. Disk brown to purple, 3-lobed; lobes smooth, narrow, apex acute. Nutlet white but purplish brown when mature, ovoid, ellipsoid, or obovoid, 2-2.5 × 1.7-2 mm, slightly 3-sided, with hexagonal reticulation, conspicuously cancellate, sparsely pubescent on ridges and apex, apex cuspidate. Fl. and fr. summer.

Slopes, valleys, open woods; below 1000 m. Guangdong, Hainan [India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam; Indian Ocean islands].