卵形薹草 luan xing tai cao

Rhizome not seen. Culms slender, 50-80 cm tall, 0.8-1 mm thick, trigonous, smooth below, scabrous above, leaflike near base. Leaves 3 or 4, flat, ca. 1.5 mm wide, much shorter than culm, margins scabrous. Involucral bracts glumelike, lowest long awned. Inflorescence 2-2.5 × 0.8-1.3 cm; spikes 4-7, gynaecandrous, brown, ovate to oblong, 5-10 × 3-6 mm, contiguous, sessile. Female glumes yellowish [or reddish] brown, ovate, ca. 3 × 1.5 mm, 1-veined, with pale yellow midrib and broadly hyaline margins, apex acute. Utricles light brown, ovate, plano-convex, 3.5-4 × 1-1.5 mm, smooth, 4-6-veined abaxially, rather broadly winged from shoulder to top, margins scabrous near top, spongy-thickened below, beak ca. 1 mm, deeply bifid abaxially. Nutlets brown, obovoid-oblong, compressed biconvex, ca. 2 × 1 mm, smooth, slightly shiny, shortly beaked and stipitate; stigmas 2. Fr. Aug. 2n = 66, 74.

Lakesides; ca. 1400 m. Xinjiang (Burqin) [Russia; N Europe].