灰株薹草 hui zhu tai cao

Carex ampullacea Goodenough.

Rhizome with long and slightly stout stolons. Culms loosely tufted, 40-100 cm tall, rather stout, obtusely trigonous, smooth, bladeless sheathed at base, rudimentary sheaths usually disintegrating into fibers. Leaves longer than culm, blades gray-green, 2-5 mm wide, flat, ± stiff, with transverse septate nodes between veins, scabrid on margins. Involucral bracts leaflike, lower involucral bracts longer than spike, shortly sheathed or not sheathed, upper involucral bracts not sheathed. Spikes 3-6; terminal 2-4 spikes, rarely only 1 spike, male, approximate, linear-cylindric, 1-3.5 cm, sessile or subsessile; remaining spikes female, lower spikes remote, cylindric, 3-6 × 0.7-0.8 cm, densely many flowered, subsessile or lower spikes shortly pedunculate. Female glumes ferruginous or pale ferruginous, oblong-lanceolate, 3.5-4 mm, membranous, green costate, margins white hyaline, apex acute or obtuse. Utricles yellowish green, slightly longer than or equaling glume, obliquely patent, eventually slightly divergent, ovate or broadly ovate, inflated trigonous, ca. 4 mm, membranous, glabrous, shiny, 4-6-veined abaxially, base subrounded, shortly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a medium-sized beak, orifice shortly 2-toothed. Nutlets brown, very loosely enveloped, broadly obovate, trigonous, ca. 1.5 mm, base shortly stipitate; style slender, flexuose, base not thickened; stigmas 3, rather short. Fl. and fr. Jun-Jul.

Swamps or meadows in high mountain regions; ca. 2400 m. Heilongjiang, Jilin, Nei Mongol [Korea, Mongolia, Russia; Europe, North America].