锡金嵩草 xi jin song cao

Carex prainii Kükenthal, Bull. Herb. Boissier, sér. 2, 4: 51. 1903, not C. B. Clarke (1904), nor Kobresia prainii Kükenthal (1904).

Rhizomes short. Basal sheaths cream, dull, slender, retaining dried leaf blades. Culms tufted, rigid, erect, trigonous, 16-38 cm tall, ca. 1 mm in diam. Leaves borne on lower half, 1/2 as long as to equaling culm; blade flat, 2.4-3 mm wide, midrib conspicuous abaxially. Inflorescence densely paniculate, brown, narrowly pyramidal, 4-7 × 1-2 cm; lowest involucral bract erect, leaflike, exceeding inflorescence; branches androgynous; spikelets unisexual. Lower inflorescence branches narrowly oblong, not stiffly appressed (lowest to 4 cm), androgynous, not bearing spikelets in lower 1/3. Female glumes brown, with green midvein, narrowly ovate or oblong, ca. 5.5 × 2 mm, midvein narrow, 3-ribbed, margin hyaline, apex aristate. Prophylls utriculiform, linear-lanceolate, 4.1-5.8 × 1-1.7 mm, 2-keeled, keels minutely scabrid, herbaceous and weakly ca. 4-veined between keels, usually minutely hispid above, margins fused from base to just below apex. Nutlets cream or pale brown, very narrowly ellipsoid, trigonous, 3-3.3 × 0.8-1.5 mm, shortly stipitate. Rachilla in female spikelets more than 1/2 length of nutlet. Stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Jul-Aug.

?S Xizang [Bhutan, India (Sikkim), Nepal].

Although not yet recorded in China, this species is almost certain to occur in S Xizang, as it occurs very close to the border in NW Bhutan and also in India (Sikkim) and NE Nepal (where it occurs at forest margins and on scree in Juniperus forests at elevations of 3000-4200 m).