类短尖薹草 lei duan jian tai cao

Rhizome long creeping. Culms 10-20 cm tall, slender, smooth, clothed at base with pale brown sheaths eventually disintegrating into reticulate fibers. Leaves shorter than culms, blades green, linear, ca. 1 mm wide, papery, involute, slightly firm, apex acuminate. Lower involucral bracts setaceous, upper glumelike. Spikes 2 or 3, approximate; terminal spike male, clavate, 1-1.5 cm, with a short peduncle; lateral spikes female or with several male flowers at apex, ovate, 6-10 mm, sessile. Female glumes brown, oblong-lanceolate, ca. 4 mm, margins pale hyaline, green 1-veined costa forming a mucro at apex. Utricles yellow-green below, red-brown above, ovate-trigonous, 4-4.5 mm, glabrous, faintly veined, base contracted and shortly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a long beak, orifice white hyaline, obliquely truncate, 2-toothed. Nutlets chestnut-colored, tightly enveloped, ovate-trigonous, ca. 2 mm; style base not thickened; stigmas 3.

● Alpine meadows, sands; 2000-3900 m. Gansu, Qinghai.